How utterly unlike that office girl was this Ellen Powell of the sail and tiller, with little strands of her hair blown before her face! But how, then, was he so completely comfortable at having come aboard, as he had, and at having remained with her?
Far, far away from Mackinac, he glanced back and, recollecting his leap, he cared not at all what his mates might be saying of him. Without that sudden, reckless impulse to board this boat, and without having yielded to it, he would not be here; and here he was completely content to be.
She brought the catboat to a wide, sandy beach below a green hillside whereon was a white house which they had seen from across the strait. They climbed up to it together; and not yet did Jay's exhaustion return. But at the odors of dinner—he thought it was dinner but it was meat and vegetable soup for supper—he was ravenous.
Ellen's mother would not have him wait; she brought him a pitcher of milk and he drank and drank.
"I ought to ask for wires," he said to Ellen. "They would be forwarded to Mackinac."
"I'll phone over for you," Ellen said, watching his eyelids droop.
"I'll take a short nap before dinner," said Jay, "if I may."
Ellen led him to the "best" room where he flung himself face downward on the bed and was asleep almost before she left the door. She lingered, listening, near his door. Toward bedtime for the household (nine o'clock) her mother suggested waking him, for the supper which she