The whole thing had bothered him and kept him awake, thinking. And it was not alone Sidney's disappointment that moved him. He was stirred by a strong desire to make the girl know Aunt Achsa as he knew her, to love the noble spirit in the weather-beaten old body. Even Lavender. These people might indeed be his own so quickly did he rise in their defense. "Well, they _are_ my own!" he muttered. If this Sidney had been like the other fifteen-year-old girls who had crossed his path he would not have bothered, for they could not have been taught by any process to recognize the gold from the dross; but she seemed different. And he had caught the impression that she had come all this way for something that she had wanted very much to find. Her disappointment had bordered on the tragic. Well, it was no business of his, but he'd make amends by laying off work for a few days and playing around with her and Lavender. He was a little taken aback when Sidney, clad in a middy and pleated skirt, for Trude's last injunction had been to brush and hang away the new suit in which she had traveled, joined him, no trace of last night's woe on her face. With Nip and Tuck following they tramped through the sand between the hollyhocks. Where the lane turned into the beach road Sidney stopped with a quick, delighted intake of breath. "Oh, the _boats_! Aren't they darling? I never saw so many. Why, the sails look all pinky!" Dugald Allan explained that this was a trick of the sun and water. "Sometimes they are green and sometimes they are gray and deep purple. The fishing boats are starting out for the grounds. They've been waiting for the tide. That large schooner's headed for the banks--I think it's the _Puritan_, Jed Starrow's new boat. She won't be back for a week or so. Most of the others will pull in by dark." "Can I go out on one of them? Oh, you don't know how much I want to, I've never been in anything but a rowboat. And I can swim! Has Lavender a boat?" "One can always find a dory one can use--whenever he wants one. And Lavender has the _Arabella_." It was on the tip of Sidney's tongue to ask "What is the _Arabella_?" and something more of this Jed Starrow whom she remembered Captain Phin Davies had mentioned, but another thought seized her, crowding out all others. From this boarder who seemed to want to be very nice to her, she might learn the answer to the riddle that was perplexing her. "Mr.-- Mr.--" "Dugald, please. Won't you treat me like one of the family?" "Mr.--Dugald, I--I want to ask you something. Prob'ly you'll think it's dreadfully rude but--you see, none of us, my sisters and me, really knew anything about Cousin Achsa and the Greens except what we found in a book in our attic--a sort of family tree book. But I wanted to go somewhere, so I wrote to her. I didn't tell my sisters until I got an answer back. Mr.--Dugald, can letters be awfully different--from people?" A guilty shiver raced the length of Mr. Dugald's spine.