"One thing please promise me," said Albert when they had started for the house, "do not hint either to her or your wife that you have told me anything about this matter. I will do all that can be done, and consult only with you, in private." CHAPTER XXIV A WHISPER OF THE OCEAN The next day was a red-letter one in Albert's history. In the morning he followed Uncle Terry around the circuit of his lobster traps in the "Gypsy's" boat, with Telly as a companion, and watched the old man hauling and rebaiting those elongated coops and taking out his hideous prizes. The day was a perfect one, the sea just ruffled by a light breeze, and as her first timidity had now worn away, he found Telly a most charming companion. She not only loved the ocean that in a way had been her playmate since childhood, but she had an artist's eye for all its beauties. How many features, new to Albert, she called to his attention, and how her naive observations, so fresh and delightful, each and all interested him, need not be quoted. It was an entirely new experience to him, and the four hours' pull in and out of the island coves and around isolated ledges where Uncle Terry set his traps passed all too quickly. "Do you know," said Albert when they had returned to the little cove where Uncle Terry kept his boats, and as he sat watching him pick up his morning's catch and toss them one by one into a large car, "that the first man who thought of eating a lobster must have been almost starved. Of all creatures that grow in the sea, there is none more hideous, and only a hungry savage could have thought them fit for food." "They ain't over hansum," replied Uncle Terry, "but fried in pork fat they go middlin' good if ye're hungry." That afternoon Telly invited Albert to row her up to a cove, at the head of which was a narrow valley where blueberries grew in profusion. "I want to pick a few," she said, "and you can make a sketch of the cove while I do." It must be recorded that helping her picking berries proved more attractive, and when her pail was full, all he did in that line was to make a picture of her sitting in front of a pretty cluster of small spruce trees, with the pail beside her and her sun-hat trimmed with ferns. "Your city friends will laugh at the country girl you found down in Maine," she remarked as she looked at the sketch, "but as they will never see me, I don't care." "My friends will never see it," he answered quietly, "only my sister. And I am going to bring her down here next summer." "Tell me about her," said Telly at once, "is she pretty?" "I think so," replied Albert, "she has eyes like yours, only her hair is not so light. She is a petite little body and has a mouth that makes one want to kiss her."