"
"I look like an Indian," she protested laughing.
"Then I don't want you to get bleached out. You must go out walking more,
or try some fishing, but be careful about those slippery rocks. I can
play no other part now than that of a dreadful example."
"I am not going to budge from this room," declared Miss Jelliffe. "You
know that you can't get along without me. Besides, there are no places
that one can walk to."
"I insist that you must get plenty of fresh air," persisted her father.
"There is no fresh air here," she objected. "It is a compound of oxygen,
nitrogen and fish, mostly very ripe fish. One has to breathe cod, and eat
it, and quintals are the only subjects of conversation. Codfish of
assorted sizes flop up in one's dreams. Last night one of them, about the
length of a whale, apparently mistook me for a squid, or some such horrid
thing, and was in the very act of swallowing me when I awoke. I'm afraid,
Daddy dear, that the fresh air of Sweetapple Cove is a dreadful fiction.
But it must be lovely outside."
She was looking through the door, which stood widely opened, towards the
places where the long smooth rollers broke upon the rocks, and beyond
them at brown sails and screaming birds darting about in quest of prey.
"You are hungering for a breath of the sea, Miss Jelliffe," I told her.
"Sammy and Frenchy are waiting for me to go to Will's Island again. With
this wind it will be only a matter of three or four hours there and back.
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