“Mrs. Clover,” said the woman as bluntly, if with a smiling mouth.
“Where am I?”
“Well”—the woman turned to the stove and busied herself with coffee-pot and frying-pan while she talked—“this was the Wreck Island House oncet upon a time. I calculate it’s that now, only it ain’t run as a hotel any more. It’s been years since there was any summer folks come here—place didn’t pay, they said; guess that’s why they shet it up and how your pa come to buy it for a song.”
“Where is the Wreck Island House, then?” Eleanor put in.
“On Wreck Island, of course.”
“And where is that?”
“In Long Island Sound, about a mile off ’n the Connecticut shore. Pennymint Centre’s the nearest village.”
“That means nothing to me,” said the girl. “How far are we from New York?”
“I couldn’t rightly say—ain’t never been there. But your pa says—I heard him tell Eph once—he can make the run in his autymobile in an hour and a half. That’s from Pennymint Centre, of course.”
Eleanor pressed her hands to her temples, temporarily dazed by the information. “Island,” she repeated—“a mile from shore—New York an hour and a half away ...!”