On every side were fields of buttercups and clover where bees buzzed. Now and then they walked through a milky way of daisies. Far out the strait laughed at them in silver-tipped waves. The harbor was like watered silk. Little Elizabeth liked it better that way than when it was like pale blue satin. They drank the wind in. It was a very gentle wind. It purred about them and seemed to coax them on.
“Isn’t it nice, walking with the wind like this?” said little Elizabeth.
“A nice, friendly, perfumed wind,” said Anne, more to herself than Elizabeth. “Such a wind as I used to think a mistral was. Mistral sounds like that. What a disappointment when I found out it was a rough, disagreeable wind!”
Elizabeth didn’t quite understand … she had never heard of the mistral … but the music of her beloved’s voice was enough for her. The very sky was glad. A sailor with gold rings in his ears … the very kind of person one would meet in Tomorrow … smiled as he passed them. Elizabeth thought of a verse she had learned in Sunday-school … “The little hills rejoice on every side.” Had the man who wrote that ever seen hills like those blue ones over the harbor?
“I think this road leads right to God,” she said dreamily.
“Perhaps,” said Anne. “Perhaps all roads do, little Elizabeth. We turn off here just now. We must go over to that island … that’s Flying Cloud.”
Flying Cloud was a long, slender islet, lying about a quarter of a mile from the shore. There were trees on it and a house. Little Elizabeth had always wished she might have an island of her own, with a little bay of silver sand in it.
“How do we get to it?”
“We’ll row out in this flat,” said Miss Shirley, picking up the oars in a small boat tied to a leaning tree.
Miss Shirley could row. Was there anything Miss Shirley couldn’t do? When they reached the island, it proved to be a fascinating place where anything might happen. Of course it was in Tomorrow. Islands like this didn’t happen except in Tomorrow. They had no part or lot in humdrum Today.
A little maid who met them at the door of the house told Anne she would find Mrs. Thompson on the far end of the island, picking wild strawberries. Fancy an island where wild strawberries grew!
Anne went to hunt Mrs. Thompson up, but first she asked if little Elizabeth might wait in the livingroom. Anne was thinking that little Elizabeth looked rather tired after her unaccustomedly long walk and needed a rest. Little Elizabeth didn’t think she did, but Miss Shirley’s lightest wish was law.
It was a beautiful room, with flowers everywhere and wild sea-breezes blowing in. Elizabeth liked the mirror over the mantel which reflected the room so beautifully and, through the open window, a glimpse of harbor and hill and strait.
All at once a man came through the door. Elizabeth felt a moment of dismay and terror. Was he a gypsy? He didn’t look like her idea of a gypsy but of course she had never seen one. He might be one … and then in a swift flash of intuition Elizabeth decided she didn’t care if he did kidnap her. She liked his crinkly hazel eyes and his crinkly brown hair and his square chin and his smile. For he was smiling.
“Now, who are you?” he asked.
“I’m … I’m me,” faltered Elizabeth, still a little flustered.
“Oh, to be sure … you. Popped out of the sea, I suppose … come up from the dunes … no name known among mortals.”
Elizabeth felt that she was being made fun of a little. But she didn’t mind. In fact she rather liked it. But she answered a bit primly.
“My name is Elizabeth Grayson.”
There was a silence … a very queer silence. The man looked at her for a moment without saying anything. Then he politely asked her to sit down.
“I’m waiting for Miss Shirley,” she explained. “She’s gone to see Mrs. Thompson about the Ladies’ Aid Supper. When she comes back we are going down to the end of the world.”
Now, if you have any notion of kidnaping me, Mr. Man!
“Of course. But meanwhile you might as well be comfortable. And I must do the honors. What would you like in the way of light refreshment? Mrs. Thompson’s cat has probably brought something in.”
Elizabeth sat down. She felt oddly happy and at home.
“Can I have just what I like?”
“Certainly.”
“Then,” said Elizabeth triumphantly, “I’d like some ice-cream with strawberry jam on it.”
The man rang a bell and gave an order. Yes, this must be Tomorrow … no doubt about it. Ice-cream and strawberry jam didn’t appear in this magical manner in Today, cats or no cats.
“We’ll set a share aside for your Miss Shirley,” said the man.
They were good friends right away. The man didn’t talk a great deal, but he looked at Elizabeth very often. There was a tenderness in his face … a tenderness she had never seen before in anybody’s face, not even Miss Shirley’s. She felt that he liked her. And she knew that she liked him.
Finally he glanced out of the window and stood up.
“I think I must go now,” he said. “I see your Miss Shirley coming up the walk, so you’ll not be alone.”
“Won’t you wait and see Miss Shirley?” asked Elizabeth, licking her spoon to get the last vestige of the jam. Grandmother and the Woman would have died of horror had they seen her.
“Not this time,” said the man.
Elizabeth knew he hadn’t the slightest notion of kidnaping her, and she felt the strangest, most unaccountable sensation of disappointment.
“Good-by and thank you,” she said politely. “It is very nice here in Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“This is Tomorrow,” explained Elizabeth. “I’ve always wanted to get into Tomorrow and now I have.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I’m sorry to say I don’t care much about Tomorrow. I would like to get back into Yesterday.”
Little Elizabeth was sorry for him. But how could he be unhappy? How could any one living in Tomorrow be unhappy?
Elizabeth looked longingly back to Flying Cloud as they rowed away. Just as they pushed through the scrub spruces that fringed the shore to the road, she turned for another farewell look at it. A flying team of horses attached to a truck wagon whirled around the bend, evidently quite beyond their driver’s control.
Elizabeth heard Miss Shirley shriek… .
Chapter XIII
The room went around oddly. The furniture nodded and jiggled. The bed … how came she to be in bed? Somebody with a white cap on was just going out of the door. What door? How funny one’s head felt! There were voices somewhere … low voices. She could not see who was talking, but somehow she knew it was Miss Shirley and the man.
What were they saying? Elizabeth heard sentences here and there, bobbing out of a confusion of murmuring.
“Are you really … ?” Miss Shirley’s voice sounded so excited..
“Yes … your letter … see for myself … before approaching Mrs. Campbell … Flying Cloud is the summer home of our General Manager… .”
If that room would only stay put! Really,