CHAPTER I
THE ISLAND
“Will-ery you-ery come-ery with-ery me-ery and-ery play-ery?” shouted Ronald from the little patch of green in front of the Lighthouse.
“Yes-ery, I-ery will-ery!” answered Lesley, jumping up from the sand and tucking her book in a cleft of the rocks. Scrambling up the cliff like a sturdy little mountain goat, she reached Ronald laughing and rosy and panting out breathlessly, “What-ery shall-ery we-ery play-ery?”
“I hadn’t thought,” said Ronald, descending from their “secret language” to plain English. “Maybe we’ll get Jenny Lind and bring up some kelp to put on our gardens.”
“I don’t call that play,” objected Lesley; “that’s good hard work!”
“Oh, nothing isn’t work,” said Ronald, sensibly, if ungrammatically, “if you do it for play.”
“You are the funniest boy, Ronnie, I ever knew in all my life!” exclaimed Lesley.
“Sure I am!” laughed Ronald. “I must be, for I’m the only boy you ever did know!”—and here they both broke into a hearty peal of merriment that brought their mother, smiling, to the window.
It was true enough. Lesley and Ronald, eleven and eight years old, were the only children on the island and the only ones who had ever been there, but they were not by any means the only young things. There was a score of light-footed, dancing kids, there was a comfortable number of chickens, a rushing, scampering horde of rabbits, “Jim,” the pet crow, and uncounted half-grown sea-birds in the shelters of the cliffs.
As for grown-ups, there were the children’s father and mother, Malcolm and Margaret McLean, and the old Mexican sailor, Pancho Lopez, commonly known as “Stumpy.” Then there was the donkey, Jenny Lind, so called for the power and melody of her voice, and of course the parents of all the kids, chickens, rabbits, and sea-birds. In the pools of the rocks and on the beach there were jellyfish, great and small, starfish, crabs and sea-anemones, but these, although they added to the population of the island, could not be said to increase its gayety.