The Slipper Point Mystery | Page 4

crazy to hear. Can't you just give me a
little hint about it, Sally?"
But the acquaintance was too new, and the mystery was evidently too
precious for the other to impart just yet. She shook her head
emphatically and replied:
"No, honestly I somehow don't want to. It's Genevieve secret and mine.
And we 've promised each other we'd never tell any one about it.
Haven't we, Genevieve?"
The baby gravely nodded again, and Sally headed her boat for the
wagon-bridge that crossed the upper part of the river.

CHAPTER II
THE ACQUAINTANCE RIPENS
DORIS said no more on the subject. She was too well-bred to persist in
such a demand when it did not seem to be welcome But though she
promptly changed the subject and talked about other things, inwardly
she had become transformed into a seething cauldron of curiosity.
Sally headed the boat for the draw in the bridge, and in another few
moments they had passed from the quiet, well-kept, bungalow-strewn

shores of the lower river, to the wild, tawny, uninhabited beauty of the
upper. The change was very marked, and the wagon bridge seemed to
be the dividing line.
"How different the river is up here," remarked Doris. "Not a house or a
bungalow, or even a fisherman's shack in sight."
"It is," agreed Sally. And then, in an unusual burst of confidence, she
added, "Do you know what I always think of when I pass through that
bridge into this part of the river? It's from the 'Ancient Mariner':
"We were the first that ever burst
ÊÊÊÊInto that silent sea.'"
Doris stared at her companion in amazement. How came this
barefooted child of thirteen or fourteen, in a little, out-of-the-way New
Jersey coast village to be quoting poetry? Where had she learned it?
Doris's own father and mother were untiring readers of poetry and other
literature, and they were bringing their daughter up in their footsteps.
But surely, this village girl had never learned such things from her
parents. Sally must have sensed the unspoken question.
"That's a long poem in a big book we have," she explained. "It has
lovely pictures in it made by a man named DorŽ." (She pronounced it
"Door.") "The book was one of my mother's wedding presents. It
always lies on our parlor table. I don't believe any one else in our house
has ever read it but Genevieve and me. I love it, and Genevieve likes to
look at the pictures. Did you ever hear of that poem?"
"Oh, yes!" cried Doris. "My father has often read me to sleep with it,
and we all love it. I'm so glad it is a favorite of yours. Do you like
poetry?"
"That's about the only poem I know," acknowledged Sally, "'cept the
ones in the school readers - and they don't amount to much. That book's
about the only one we have 'cept a Bible and a couple of novels. But
I've learned the poem all by heart." She rowed on a way in silence,

while Doris marvelled at the bookless condition of this lonely child and
wondered how she could stand it. Not to have books and papers and
magazines unnumbered was a state unheard of to the city child. She had
brought half a trunkful with her, to help while away the time at
Manituck. But before she could speak of it, Sally remarked:
"That's Huckleberry Heights, - at least I've named it that, 'cause
Genevieve and I have picked quarts and quarts of huckleberries there.
She pointed to a high, sandy bluff, overgrown at the top with scrub-oak,
stunted pines and huckleberry bushes. "And that's Cranberry Creek,"
she went on, indicating a winding stream that emptied into the river
nearby. "'Way up that creek there's an old, deserted mill that's all falling
to pieces. It's kind of interesting. Want to go sometime?"
"Oh, I'm crazy to!" cried Doris. "There's nothing I enjoy more than
exploring things, and I've never had the chance to before. We 've
always gone to such fashionable places where everything's just spic and
span and cut and dried, and nothing to do but what every one else does.
I'm deathly sick of that sort of thing. Our doctor recommended Mother
to come to this place because the sea and pine air would be so good for
her. But he said it was wild, and different from the usual summer
places, and I was precious glad of the change, I can tell you." There
was something so sincere in Doris's manner that it won Sally over
another point. After a few moments of silent rowing, she said:
"We 're coming to a place, in a minute, that Genevieve and I like a lot.
If you want, we can land there and get