“If we are going to do that,” she said, rising stiffly, “we will have to keep moving. If we don’t, we’ll be no better than the wreck of the Hesperus. Let’s go somewhere. It’s a little late, but some place on the island may still be open. A ham and egg place. Haven’t any money, but they’ll trust us. We look so honest, and our clothes are so spick and span.” She looked at Tillie, in her blouse that clung like a rag and knickers that turned her slim legs into pipe stems, and laughed again.
“Come on,” said Tillie, struggling to keep up the illusion. “I know a place to go.”
She made her way up the gravel beach to a spot where the surface was soft, sandy and half overgrown with grass. Then they started to skirt the shore.
They had not gone a hundred yards before Florence began to feel that Tillie was leading a lost hope. The wind was rising. The cold seemed more bitter.
“Never will stand it,” she told herself with grim conviction. “Never in the world!”
Still she trudged on. Her limbs were growing stiff, her eyes blurred. As they rounded a clump of scrub birch trees, she thought her eyes deceived her. There appeared to be something over there that was not a tree; a small square thing like an overgrown chimney.
“Look!” She pulled Tillie by the arm. “Look, Tillie! Is there something over there?”
Tillie looked, then cried out for very joy.
“It’s a fish shanty! Daddy Red Johnson’s fish shanty! He left it here winter before last. Then he died. Nobody touched it. Oh, thank God!”
She dropped to her knees, but was up in an instant.