Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/58

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44
THE HAPPY VENTURE

make of the supplies she had bought, and looked about.

"We're near the bay," she said; "that is, you can see little silvery flashes of it between trees. They're pointy trees—junipers, I think, and there are a lot of rocks in the fields, and wild-flowers. Nothing like any place you've ever been in—wild, and salty, and—yes, quite nice."

They passed several low, sturdy farm-houses, and one or two boarded-up summer cottages; then two white chimneys showed above a dark green tumble of trees, and the ancient Hopkins pointed with his whip saying:

"Ther' you be. Kind o' dull this time year, I guess; but my! Asquam's real uppy, come summer—machines a-goin', an' city folks an' such. Reckon I'll leave you at the gate where I kin turn good."

The flap-flop of the horse's hoofs died on Winterbottom Road, and no sound came but the wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from somewhere the melancholy creaking of a swinging shutter. The gate-way was grown about with grass; Ken crushed it as he forced open the gate, and the faint, sweet smell rose. Kirk