“What do you suppose he would look like, Jane, with a clean face and a shave and his hair combed and decent clothes?” she had asked. “He has such a lot of red hair that I bet he is cross as the dickens.”
“Child,” said Jane with the superior wisdom of one who has lived for twenty-one years with a wifeless father and a motherless brother, “all men are cross when they are sick. He is probably quite nice.”
Consequently the strange man’s discoverer was delightfully surprised when she came down from on deck to hear his story and found him nicely shaven, with his red hair, which she immediately decided was auburn, brushed till it shone and his dirty white ducks replaced by a gay bathrobe of Jack’s.
“I would like to make it awfully interesting,” he began with a grin, “I feel that the two girls who carried my hundred and eighty pounds down that hill should have the reward of having saved a movie hero or the lost heir—anyone, in fact, except just plain Tim Reynolds, who is doing nothing more romantic than spending the summer with his family at Nantucket Island. That is I am supposed to be—the fact is I am proud possessor of a thirty-foot sailboat and, as the result of that, I had the misfortune, or the fortune rather,” this with a friendly little nod at Frances, “to sail into Old Harbor and climb up that hill and break my leg.”
“We are glad you did,” announced Mabel genially and then as everybody laughed at her she added, “Of course, I don’t mean I am glad he broke his leg, you all are so silly. Mr. Reynolds, you know I meant that we are glad you are on board the ‘Boojum,’ don’t you?”
Tim Reynolds nodded reassuringly and begged them not to call him “Mister.”
“You must let us take you to Nantucket, Tim,” said Mr. Wing.
“I couldn’t think of it, sir, you have been far too good already.”
“But we are going to Nantucket anyway. All of us want to see ’Sconset,” put in Frances.
“There is nothing I would like better, if you are really going there and I won’t be too much of a care. And, now that I have accepted, don’t you suppose it would be a good idea to get a message to my fond parents to the effect that their son is still inhaling and exhaling at regular intervals?”