LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter I

      GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

      WITH a stick of bleached driftwood Kit, who was waiting for the sloop Polly to tack her way into the Creek, drew large letters on the sand.

      CHRISTOPHER FREEMAN

      KIT FREEMAN

      CAPTAIN KIT

      CAPTAIN KIDD

      CAPTAIN KIT

      Then he stood still, cocking his head on one side and staring at what he had written. The breeze from the Bay blew stinging bits of sand against his bare legs and ruffled his hair every which way, but he was too busy with his thoughts to notice anything so familiar as wind and sand.

      He spoke the two words aloud, liking the sound of them. Perhaps someday he would have a boat of his own, and folks the whole length of the Cape would call him that. “There goes Captain Kit,” he could imagine them saying, “weighing anchor on his fifteenth v’yage to the China seas.”

      Of course his chances of ever owning even a flat-bottomed skiff probably depended on the letter which Skipper Barney at the helm of the Polly was bringing him this very moment in answer to one he had sent his parents on the skipper’s up-trip. For if he had to return to Boston — and to school — Kit felt instinctively that such things as boats of any kind would fade out of the picture.

      “Dear Ma and Pa,” he had written, “Please don’t make me go back with Skipper Barney on his next trip. Let me stay here with Aunt Thany. She needs me and we get on fine. I dig clams for her and keep the wood box filled, and the rest of the time I am trying to find out something, so I am always occupied. Your affectionate son, KIT.”

      Suddenly Kit realized that the Polly’s bowsprit was headed straight for the mouth of the Creek, and, with the brisk northwest wind smartly spanking her sails, would be abreast of the Glass Works wharf in no time at all.

      Flinging away the bit of driftwood, he sprinted over the hard beach toward the dunes which lay between him and the sandy, winding road back to town.

      Kit and the Polly arrived almost simultaneously at the wooden pier extending from the long factory building to the marshy edge of the Creek. However, Kit knew better than to approach Skipper Barney before he and the Glass Works shipping clerk, who had hurried down the wharf while the sails were being furled, had finished their business of checking the bags of nitrate and saltpeter and pearlash which had been the sloop’s cargo. Not, in fact, until the two handy boys, Sam and Ben, had started to roll the heavy sacks up the pier in their wheelbarrows, did he let his impatience get the better of him.

      “I say, Skipper Barney, have you — I mean ——” In his eagerness to find out what he so much wanted to know Kit fairly choked on his own words, and the skipper’s blue eyes, set in a network of fine wrinkles, twinkled.

      “I brought ye an answer,” he said. “Two of ’em, in fact. Right here in my pocket. Somewheres. And don’t be over-disappointed, lad, if your parents, sensible-like, think you should be going to school instead of gallivanting all over the Cape.” In his anxiety Kit did not notice that the skipper’s eyes were twinkling more than ever, as, fumbling in his jacket pocket, he brought out two letters and handed them to Kit.

      One was from Kit’s mother and one — this surprised Kit — from his father, who seldom did any letter-writing which he could get his wife to do for him. Kit read his mother’s note first, knowing that it would be his mother who made the final decision about his staying. The letter was long and spoke of his grandfather’s ill-health, of an epidemic of smallpox raging in a neighboring community, of Skipper Barney’s call at their home with Kit’s note. It was only the final paragraph, however, which seemed really important to Kit.

      “Your father and I have decided, in view of conditions here, that, although we do not approve your absence from school, it may be well for you to remain where you are for a spell longer. Your father is writing to you on a matter connected with your stay, so I will say no more at present.”

      Kit felt joyfully as if he had been handed both a birthday and Christmas gift rolled into one. That is, he felt that way until he read the letter from his father, and even re-read it to make sure it actually said what he hoped it didn’t.

      “My dear Son,

      Idleness is not good for youth. If you must remain on the Cape, and it seems wise that you should, I insist that you apply for a job in the Glass Works where an old friend of mine is superintendent. Present my respects to him, and request him for my sake to give you even a lowly berth. Inform me by Skipper Barney how you make out.

      Your aff. Father.”

      His father wanted him to take a job in the Glass Works! Driving the plodding oxen that hauled the pine logs for the factory’s eight-pot furnace, running barrows of nitrate and saltpeter and pearlash up and down the dock, sweeping up the factory floor — one of these would undoubtedly be the sort of “lowly berth” to which his father referred. None of them would pay more than two or, at the most, three dollars a week, and where would he get any spare time to spend at Danger Cove?

      Skipper Barney, who had not missed one of the changing expressions on Kit’s face, removed his pipe from his mouth. “Something wrong, lad?” he asked curiously.

      Kit, unable to say a single word at just that moment, nodded.

      “Not asking you to go back, be they? Your Ma told me —”

      “No,” Kit managed to reply, “not that. But my father says I must get a job in the Glass Works.” Kit threw such a woeful glance at the building looming beside him that the skipper smiled.

      “Come now, lad,” he said. “’Tis not so bad as that. Can be mighty interesting. Ever watch a glass blower turn out a bottle, or an engraver decorate a whale-oil lamp?”

      “It isn’t that,” said Kit. “It’s just — well, it would sound silly to explain, but I might as well go back to Boston, if I can’t have any time of my own. There’s something I want to find out.”

      “I see,” said the skipper gravely, replacing his pipe. He sat down on one of the snubbing posts used to catch the loop of rope from the sloop or from the flat-bottomed boat which sometimes went out into the Bay to meet the sloop when wind or tide was wrong. “Don’t suppose I’d be of

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