She felt a little better and pleasantly sacrificial after she had written this vow. Poor Sidney, she did not know that the words that Lavender had likened to music and the beating sea would sing in her ears as persistently in Timbuctoo as in the quiet of her attic den!
CHAPTER XV
CAP’N PHIN
What made life at Sunset Lane so delightful to Sidney was that she never knew from one day to the next what she was going to do. Back at Middletown everything was always arranged ahead—they did this on Tuesday and this on Wednesday and always on Saturday there was the League. At Sunset Lane she did not even know when it was Tuesday or Thursday unless she stopped to think; jolly things happened as though they popped out of the blue ether.
Like that Miss Letty dropped in one evening after supper.
“Do you want to ride over to Wellfleet with me enough to be ready at six o’clock?” she asked Sidney very casually, as though it were nothing at all to suggest. Sidney had longed to ride with Miss Letty in the sideboard buggy behind King who, Mr. Dugald declared, had come off the Ark with Noah. And to go to Wellfleet, perhaps see her friend Cap’n Phin Davies!
“Can we call on Cap’n Davies?” she asked eagerly.
Miss Letty smiled. “I reckon I couldn’t steer King away from Elizy Davies’ house. I thought I’d take you there and leave you while I give my lessons and then I’d ride ’round and have a visit with Elizy and Phin and maybe some of Elizy’s gingerbread. Elizy and I went to school together.”
The next morning Sidney was ready and on her, way to Miss Letty’s house before six o’clock. She had been far too excited to eat any of the breakfast Aunt Achsa had set out for her but Miss Letty, guessing this, made her sit down and eat a bit of toast and a boiled egg.
“It’s a long way between here and Wellfleet and King’s slower than he used to be.”
Seated next to Miss Letty, jogging along through the misty morning, Sidney could not speak for pure rapture of delight. She had never ridden behind a horse in her life! She thought King a giant steed; with every swish of his long tail her heart skipped a beat, the move of his great muscles under his heavy flanks held her fascinated gaze. Miss Letty talked to him as though he were human and the animal understood and tossed his head. She said: “Now, King, we’re going to Wellfleet and we got to get there before noon.” And then she let the reins slacken and slip down between her knees as though she had no further care. One certainly could not do that with an automobile! Sidney did not wonder now that Miss Letty preferred King to a Ford.