A group of sailors swaggered by, jesting and laughing, on their way to the Wolfe Tavern after grog. The spring wind brought a salt smell up from the river, a fish smell, and the clean scent of pine logs from the raft in the cove. One lone candle burned in the window of a counting house nearby and showed them a figure hunched over a tall desk and open ledger. Dick pointed suddenly toward it. “Shiver my jib and start my planks if I’d want to be a counting-house clerk!” he exclaimed. Dick was apprenticed to his uncle in the ship-building trade, but what he wanted was to go to sea. Eben, an orphan, did chores at a boardinghouse in Chandler’s Lane, and Johnny helped his father on their farm below the town, a farm known for its poor soil and salt hay. Before anyone could answer him, a girl’s laugh rang out, somewhere in the shadowy streets above. “That’s Sally Rose!” cried Eben. “I’d know her laugh in Jamaicy--if I was to hear it there! She--she--you knew she was coming down here, Johnny! You knew!” “Yes, I knew,” said Johnny. There was a light in his eye, a reflection from the counting-house candle, perhaps. “She said she and Kit might take a walk this way, if Granny Greenleaf would let them out.” “Well, Granny did,” cried Dick, “for she’s coming, and Kitty with her. Look there!” Two girls came tripping gaily toward them, their full skirts sweeping the rutted lane, little white shawls drawn about their shoulders, their hair brushed back from their faces and falling in curls behind. One girl’s hair was soft brown, and the other’s yellow like Indian corn. The boys stood up. Johnny went forward. “I been waiting for you, Sally Rose,” he said. Sally Rose walked slowly toward him, her head lifted, her eyes shining. She put out both her hands. “My, you’re handsome, Johnny,” she said. “I’d forgotten how handsome you were. We don’t have lads like you in Charlestown, you know.” Johnny gripped both her hands against the front of his jacket and took a deep breath. The other boys looked embarrassed. Eben stared down at his feet. He suddenly realized that they were bare, bare and not very clean. He owned a pair of shoes, of course, but he only wore them on Sundays and in the wintertime. “Glad you came back, Sally Rose,” he said, not looking at her. “Oh, thank you, Eben,” she answered sweetly. “I’m so glad that you’re glad.” Johnny opened his eyes wide and gave Eben an unfriendly stare. “Hey, Kit,” said Dick, “I haven’t seen you since--” The brown-haired girl smiled. “You’d have seen me if you’d looked,” she said. “I passed you by the ropewalk last Friday afternoon. I was going to Polly Little’s to bring home some tulip bulbs for Granny. I waved to you, but you wouldn’t see me. You were too busy cleaning a tar barrel.” Dick looked down at the worn planks of Somerby’s Wharf. It was dark beside the river now, and the only light came from the windowpanes of the small houses along the street. “I’m sorry, Kitty,” he said.