"In the Reserve. He has been since the beginning. They were only waiting for a ship."
"And the Arcadia?"
He turned and smiled. "She is enrolled too, but it is a secret. I don't know why a secret."
So that explained her activities. There might be other secrets; and I thought of Elizabeth and Bobby. Elizabeth could be trusted to keep a secret well, and Bobby knew it. And Elizabeth had been away much of the time for two weeks or more, always going in the Arcadia wherever she went, but usually home for the night. By "home" I mean our house. I thought she was but a guest of Mrs. Fergus, but there might be some other explanation. It did not matter. Elizabeth was Elizabeth, and Eve rejoiced to see her face with its crown of beaver-colored hair, and her calm and smiling eyes. I have not yet decided what is the color of her eyes, but they suit Eve.
And I looked up, and I saw the Arcadia just stretching her sails as a man will stretch his arms and legs in preparation for the using of them. She had been there all night. And I saw that noble yacht of Pukkie's casting off from the stage in the little harbor of Old Goodwin's, and Pukkie and Elizabeth in her. And Pukkie saw me—he had been waiting to catch my eye—and they both waved to me as the boat caught the wind and stood out of the harbor. She was tiny, that yacht of Pukkie's, but she was complete; as complete as the Arcadia. Indeed, she was not unlike her, save that one was a schooner and the other a sloop. To see that boat of Pukkie's out upon the water with no other near enough to compare them, you might think she was of any size, even a big boat—until you saw the two huddled in the cockpit or one of them stretched upon the deck, almost covering it.
"See," I said to Old Goodwin, "there goes Pukkie."
He stood at the head of the gangway, and he smiled a happy smile.
"I see. He will go near all the lobster buoys, and the fish traps, and the rocks uncovered by the tide, and pretend that they are submarines. He has told me. And he pretends that the Yankee is a vessel that has been sunk by a submarine. What it is to be a boy!"