The whole Alden family sat on the front porch reading. It was one of those hot vacation days in June. Supper was over and the sun had not yet set.
“Plenty of light to read by,” said Benny as he took his favorite book to his favorite seat in the corner. Jessie and Violet, his sisters, were already sitting in the porch swing. Henry, the oldest of the Aldens, was just home from college. He sat in one easy chair, and Grandfather sat in another.
Suddenly Grandfather looked up. Benny was not reading any more. He was looking straight ahead. But he was not looking at anything.
“What’s the matter, Ben?” asked Mr. Alden.
“I’m thinking,” said Benny. He did not move.
“What are you thinking about, old man?” asked Henry. “It seems to be important.”
“No, it isn’t important,” Benny said, but he did not go back to his book.
“You might as well tell us,” said his older sister Jessie. “It must be interesting.”
Violet added, “Please, Benny.”
“Well,” said Benny, “it’s something Max said.”
“Oh, your friend Max?” said Henry. “What did Max say?”
“Well, it wasn’t much,” said Benny, “but it got me thinking. He said that we Aldens always seem to have an exciting time on vacation no matter where we go. Always some adventure.”
“Max was right,” said Violet.
“Yes,” said Benny, looking at Violet. “I told Max he was dead right. But then he said he’d like to see us have any exciting adventures if we went to his father’s favorite fishing town up on the northern coast. He said it was a tiny village with nothing there. He is sure we couldn’t go there and have any adventures. He said even an Alden couldn’t find anything exciting in that place.”
Mr. Alden was quick to read Benny’s mind. He laughed and said, “So I suppose you want to go to this fishing village and try it?”
Benny turned and looked at his grandfather. “Well,” he said, “you see it sounded pretty interesting. I mean I can’t imagine being dull anywhere, can you?”
“No, Benny, I can’t,” said Mr. Alden. “This is not a family to have a dull time. It never was. How would you like to go there for a short time? There would still be half the summer left to go somewhere else.”
“Oh, I remember!” said Jessie. “You had something all planned for this summer, Grandfather.”
“It can wait,” Mr. Alden said, smiling to himself.
“It certainly would be fun to visit a dull town,” said Jessie. “Is it right on the sea?”
“Yes,” said Benny. “It’s an island at high tide with water on all sides. But at low tide the ocean goes out and leaves a roadway made of rocks and gravel. You can drive a car across or walk across. But the people don’t go off the island very often, Max says. Just the summer visitors.”
“And I guess there are not many of them,” said Henry.
“Where do the visitors stay?” asked Violet.
“There’s only one place,” Benny answered. “It’s something like an old country hotel with six rooms for summer fishermen like Max’s father. The village is tiny. There’s a schoolhouse and a store. There isn’t even a post office. There are houses for the people who live there, and a sardine factory where they work. They use the schoolhouse for town meetings. And that’s all.”
Grandfather looked around at the family. “If you all want to go, I’m ready. But every one of you must want to go.”
“Of course we do, Grandfather,” said Henry. “It will be fun to prove old Max is wrong. We have exciting times just by ourselves.”
“We’ll show Max!” said Benny.
Henry added, “It would be interesting to study a village where people are so cut off from everyone else. I might even write a college paper on it.”
“What’s the name of this village?” asked Grandfather. “Maybe I know it from my old fishing trips.”
“Maybe you do,” said Benny. “You know a lot of things. It is called Port Elizabeth.”
Mr. Alden shook his head. “No, I don’t know that name. We can look for it on a map. It can’t be too far away.”
Violet ran into the house and soon came back with a book of maps. “You look it up,” said Grandfather.
“Here it is,” cried Violet. “It must be very small, the name is in such fine print. And here’s the island. The only town near it is Northport.”
Henry looked at the map. “It looks as if Northport is about thirty miles away,” he said. “It must be a very small town, too.”
“It’s bigger than Port Elizabeth, though,” Jessie said. “We can probably buy things there.”
“We can take some things with us, too,” said Grandfather.
Benny began to laugh. “I never thought you would want to go to Max’s village,” he said. “I just can’t help thinking about the surprise we’ll have for Max.”
“Neither can I,” said Henry. “We’ll let Benny tell Max when we get home what a dull time we had.”
“You seem to be very sure you will have an adventure,” said Grandfather, his eyes twinkling. “What happens if it is dull, just as Max said?”
“Let’s try it anyway, Grandfather,” said Jessie. “If it is dull, we won’t mind.”
Violet said, “I’ll take my watercolors. I love to paint the sea.”
Henry winked at Benny and said, “We’ll find something to do. We can always fish.”
Just a week later Henry drove the station wagon into the fishing village of Port Elizabeth. The tide was out. It was exactly as Max had said. There was the old hotel with six rooms, the schoolhouse, and a small store. They knew that the storekeeper, Mr. Fenton, owned the hotel. He had rented them three rooms by telephone.
“Shall we go to the store first?” asked Henry.
“Yes, I’m sure Mr. Fenton will have the keys. We can let him know we have arrived,” said Grandfather. “I hope the beds are comfortable.”
Everyone was surprised when Mr. Fenton opened the door of the first room. They had not expected anything so pleasant. There were two comfortable beds. The floor was bare except for two handmade rugs near the beds.
“Very good, very good,” said Mr. Alden nodding his head at the storekeeper. “I can see that we are going to enjoy this.”
“It’s lovely,” said Violet. “It’s just right for us.”
“Now,” said Mr. Fenton, “I’m going to show you something I don’t show all my guests. It’s a kitchen.”
He opened another door at the end of the hall, and, sure enough, there was a small kitchen. There was a large table in the middle of the room. The sink and stove were old fashioned, but the refrigerator looked new. There were cupboards full of dishes.
“It will be a pleasure to let you use it,” Mr. Fenton said. “There’s no place to eat in Port Elizabeth, and you’d have to go to Northport for your meals—and that’s thirty miles away.”
“Oh, aren’t you kind!” cried Jessie, “A kitchen like this is just what we need.”
“Can you cook?” asked Mr. Fenton.
“They all can cook, even Benny,” said Mr. Alden, laughing. “I tell them they can make something out of nothing.”
“Good,” said Mr. Fenton. “I thought you people looked as if you could take care of yourselves. I’m pretty good at guessing what people are like. Don’t often make a mistake. That’s why I showed you the kitchen.”
“Today we brought our own supper,” said Benny. “We didn’t know about the kitchen.”
“That’s fine,” said Mr. Fenton. “You must be tired. You have had a long drive. Maybe you’ll go to bed early and start up again tomorrow.”
“We’ll just drive around and see the town first,” said Mr. Alden.
“It won’t take you long,” said Mr. Fenton with a laugh. “It’s a very small place.”
Henry drove slowly along the sandy road by the ocean. Two large wharves stood out in the water. The sardine factory could be seen in the distance, but it was closed for the day. Some boats were tied up there. Beyond the factory was a high cliff, and on top was a very large and beautiful old house.
“I wonder who lives in that house,” said Benny. “Isn’t it huge? Must be a big family. I guess there are twenty rooms.”
“It looks to me like an old family mansion,” said Grandfather. “It is certainly not new. The house seems to be closed, too.”
It was not, but the Aldens did not know that until later. The road curved around past the cliff, past the store and a row of fishermen’s houses, and back to the hotel. That was all there was to see, except for the schoolhouse. A great many bushes and trees stood between the schoolhouse and their hotel.
The schoolhouse had once been painted white, but much of the paint had worn off. On top there was a belfry with a bell in it.
“Listen!” said Benny. “Is that the school bell ringing?”
“Oh, Benny!” Jessie said. “What an imagination!”
Violet looked hard at the building. She said, “I think it’s a pretty little school. That big chimney is a queer shape, isn’t it?”
And so it proved to be.
“We have done the town,” said Grandfather. “That is all there is. Maybe Max is right, Benny, and it is dull.”
“Well, maybe,” said Benny. “We haven’t been here very long. Anyway I’m hungry.”
“You shouldn’t be hungry,” said Jessie. She looked at her watch. Then she looked up in surprise. “It’s half past five!” she exclaimed. “I thought it was about three o’clock.”
“It’s a long time since we stopped for lunch,” said Henry. “Let’s get unpacked and have supper.”
The girls were delighted. They put the straw basket on the kitchen table and opened it. They took out chicken sandwiches, pickles, cheese, doughnuts, and potato chips. Benny ran over to the store to get cold milk.
Grandfather had hardly had time to unpack when he heard Violet call, “Supper!”
The children sat on long benches, but Grandfather had a chair at the head of the table.
“This reminds me of Surprise Island,” said Henry. “Only there we didn’t have a real table. We used two barrels with a board across them.”
“One thing is the same,” said Benny. “I’m starved. Let’s begin!”
Everyone else must have been hungry, too. The food was soon gone. Then the boys went to their room to unpack, and the girls to another. Grandfather had a big room alone.
The hotel was so near the ocean that the splash of the waves kept them awake for a while. But they loved the sound of waves and quickly fell asleep.
The Aldens did not know that soon they would meet a wonderful friend and find some people who were not friendly at all. |