Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Grandparents as parents -- Juvenile fiction
And at that Judy cried, too, and they sat down on the sand and had a
little weep together, comfortably, as girls will, when the danger is
over and every one is safe and happy.
"I'm all right," gasped Judy at last, mopping her eyes with a clean
handkerchief, offered her by the ever-useful Perkins. "I'm all
right--but--but--Anne was such a goosie,--and I am so happy--" And
with that she dropped her head on Anne's shoulder again and cried
harder than ever.
"Dear heart, don't cry," begged the Captain.
"She is tired to death," explained Launcelot.
"She needs her breakfast, sir," suggested Perkins.
"So do I," grumbled Tommy Tolliver, who stood in the background feeling
very much left out.
But even as they spoke, Judy slipped into her father's arms again, and
lay there quietly, as she murmured, so that no one else heard:
"'Home is the sailor from the sea'--oh, father, father, I knew you
would come back to me--I knew you would come back some day."
CHAPTER XXV
LAUNCELOT BUYS A COW
Never had Fairfax seen so many interesting arrivals as during that
second week in August.
On Monday came Dr. Grennell, mysterious and smiling; on Tuesday, Judge
Jameson, pale but radiant; on Wednesday, Tommy and Launcelot, bursting
with important news; on Thursday, Captain Jameson, with a joyful dark
maiden on one side of him, and a joyful fair maiden on the other; on
Friday, Perkins, beaming with the baggage, and on Saturday, the
Terry-dog, resignedly, in a crate.
And every one, except Terry, the dog, had a story to tell, and the
story was one that was to become a classic in the annals of Fairfax.
How Captain Jameson had been washed overboard in southern seas, how he
had been rescued by natives and had lived among them; how he had been
found by a party searching for gold; how he had started with them for
home, had become ill as soon as they put to sea, and because of his
illness had been the only one left when the ship caught on fire; how
the fire had gone out, and he had floated on the deserted vessel until
picked up by a fishing-boat, and how he had been brought to
Newfoundland and how Dr. Grennell had discovered him by means of the
Spanish coins.
But in the eyes of the children of Fairfax his adventures paled before
those of Tommy Tolliver. To a gaping audience that small boy talked of
the things he had done--of shipwrecks, of desert islands, of hunger and
thirst until the little girls gazed at him with tears in their eyes,
although the effect was somewhat spoiled by Jimmie Jones' artless
remark, "But you were only away four days, Tommy!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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