That one Abner Ellis had been a Selectman for ten years did not interest her—she passed him for the next entry.
“Ann Ellis married Jonathan Green, June 10, 1874. To this happy union has been born one precious daughter, our little Ann.” Why, this “little Ann” was her own mother, of course. And the Jonathan Green who was her father had written in the book the little notes about all the Ellises so that when the “Little Ann” grew up she would know all about them and be proud—Priscilla who had died of small-pox and the ancestor with the Congressional Medal. Sidney suddenly thought it strange that her mother had cared so little for the family tree that she had left it, dusty and forgotten, in the attic. Probably that was because her mother had been too busy being a poet’s wife to bother about dead and gone Ellises.
She felt a little rush of tender remorse toward Jonathan Green—she wished he had not died when her mother was a little girl. He was her own grandfather. And he had had a tree behind him—there had doubtless been as many Greens as Ellises. She wished she knew what they had been like. And almost in answer to the thought her eyes fell upon an entry on another page, made in Jonathan Green’s fine hand.
“On this day, October 6, 1869, my brother, Ezekiel Green, sailed from Provincetown for far shores on his good ship the Betsy King which same has come into his possession as a reward for years of thrift and perseverance. God’s blessing go with him—”
There were more entries concerning the brother, Ezekiel. He and his good ship the Betsy King were reported as returning safely from the Azores, and again they had rounded Cape Horn, again had ventured to East Indian waters.
“Oh-h!” cried Sidney aloud for at the top of another page she read that the Betsy King had foundered off the Cape in the storm of ’72—with all lives. “May the soul of my beloved brother, Ezekiel Green, rest in peace with his Maker.”
Sidney forgot the Burton-Ellis tree in her breathless interest in the fate of Ezekiel Green who had “foundered” and then rested in peace. It was like a story of marvellous adventure. Her grandfather had evidently thought a great deal of this brother who had sailed the oceans wide. He had added, beneath the entry of the foundering of the Betsy King: “Our loving prayers go out in behalf of our beloved Ezekiel’s son and daughter, Asabel and Achsa. May they walk in the path their respected father trod before them!” “That’s funny,” reflected Sidney, “How can they when he sailed the wide seas!”
HER EYES FELL UPON AN ENTRY ON ANOTHER PAGE
Sidney’s brain actually crackled with lightning calculations. This Asabel and Achsa must be old but they might be still living—and at Provincetown, from whence the Betsy King had sailed. Perhaps Asabel had a boat, too. Provincetown—she looked at the map. Why, Provincetown was at the very tip end of that crooked finger of land which always seemed to be beckoning to ships to come to Massachusetts. She knew all about it—she and Nancy had read a delightful book in which a little girl had lived with two guardians who were old sea captains—like Ezekiel Green. And she, Sidney Romley, had never known that she had relatives, real flesh-and-blood relatives, lots of them, no doubt, who lived right on Cape Cod! She wished that Nancy were with her that she might tell her at once. She figured off the generations on her fingers. Ezekiel Green was her mother’s uncle, her great uncle. This son and daughter, Asabel and Achsa, were her mother’s first cousins, her second cousins. She felt suddenly proudly rich in kin.