After all Sidney never sent the telegram to Trude. But it must not be thought that all in a moment she adapted herself to her new surroundings, or saw Cousin Achsa as the “boarder” had pictured her; her anticipations had soared too high, on the wings of too agile an imagination, to surrender at once to their downfall. Even Dugald Allan she regarded with inward skepticism.

How she rebuilt her small world can be chronicled best by peeping over her shoulder one afternoon, the third day after her coming, as she wrote in her precious “Dorothea” book. At the last moment she had brought this with her, moved by a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving it behind; there was no knowing what liberties the Leaguers, left alone, might take.

“Dorothea Mine, you do not know how it comforts me to feel your dear pages. I am not alone for you are with me. And when I think how I almost left you at home. There is so much to write that I scarcely know where to begin and must needs sit with my pen suspended. This is the funniest place I ever saw but no one, absolutely no one but you, dear bosom friend, shall ever know that. I mean it is funny because everything is just the opposite of what I expected it to be. I had thought, you see, that our relatives probably lived in a big white square house high up on a rock-bound coast against which the waves dashed in foamy crests. That’s the way I wanted the house to look. And instead it is very small and all wigglety, with sand hills around it. But it is cute for the rooms are small like a doll’s house. There is a kitchen in which we do everything which I did not like at first only it is a different kitchen and there is not any other place anyway for the parlor is so stiff and dressed-up looking that it would be shocking to muss it up. The kitchen smells good and shines it is so clean and there is a door that opens right out into the flowers. I shall not say much about Cousin Achsa because Dugald, who is the boarder, says that she is an aristocrat of solid material and he must know because he has lived here summers for a very long time. But she talks bad English like Huldah only she says ‘I swum,’ instead of ‘Yah!’ And she is queer looking but then all is not gold that glitters. But she is very kind to me and I think likes me and she cooks the grandest things and so much. She works all the time. I do not think I ever saw anyone who could work so fast. She is like she was wound up inside and had to keep working until she ran down.

“But pour out my heart I must about Lavender who is my cousin. You see I did not know I had a young cousin until Phin Davies (of him I will record later), told me of the benefit and of the baby who would be sixteen now, he said. Then I became greatly excited in anticipation of a cousin about my own age to play with. And oh, what did I find! But only once will I truly describe him for I have promised Mr. Dugald to think of Lavender as the poor flower on the crooked stem and I make myself shut my inside eyes so that I cannot see that he is different. He is small for he only comes to my ears and his arms hang way down and he has funny, long fingers and one shoulder is higher than the other and he has a hump on his back. There, I have written the truth. Now I will remember the flower. Lavender has beautiful and very wise eyes and a low voice that sounds like music and a lovely name, like a name in a languishing novel. And he is dreadfully smart, and gets it all from the lots and lots of books which he reads to make up for not going to school. I suppose he hates to go to school and anyway his mind is working all the while other boys are playing ball and doing things he can’t do. At least Mr. Dugald thinks it’s that way. Mr. Dugald told me how to win Lavender’s affection for he is terribly shy and that was by making a great fuss over Nip and Tuck who are the cats and Lavender is passionately fond of the cats. That was hard, too, for we never had any cats as you know and the only cat I ever touched was Mrs. Jordan’s old Tommy when I wanted him in a play Nancy and I were going to give in the attic and he scratched me. But I bravely took Nip and Tuck in my arms and you would have been surprised if you could have seen how beatified Lavender looked. At least that’s the way Mr. Dugald said he looked afterwards. And he has liked me ever since. I mean Lavender, of course. I must digress to say a word of Nip and Tuck. They are extraordinary cats. They are quite old and big and black and I think they are solid aristocrats, too, and you can only tell them apart by a nick in Nip’s ear that he got in a fight. They can lick any dog or cat in this part of Provincetown. They are terrors. And they are twins, I forgot to say. And they do the same things all the time like the Crooker twins at school. Lavender loves all animals. He is always bringing home some stray thing only Nip and Tuck will not let them stay and that makes Lavender sad.

“But I must not spend all my time telling you of my cousins and the cats when there is so much terribly exciting to write about. This is the most different place I ever knew. It is all sand and the houses look like doll’s houses most of them and come right out to the funniest little streets that are not much wider that our sidewalks at home and all the nice houses have flowers around them somewhere. And they are mostly a lovely shiny gray that is pinky in the sun. Mr. Dugald says they get that way from the salt in the air and that most of the old houses were shingled from the wood that was in old masts. And he says the reason flowers grow brighter and bigger here is because years ago the ships used plain earth for ballast and changed it when they got into the harbor and that there is soil right here in Provincetown from almost every corner of the world. I held a handful from Cousin Achsa’s garden and pretended I knew it was from Algiers. There are a lot of stores on the Main street and some are like the stores home and Mr. Dugald says they are a shame. It is hard to walk on the sidewalk because it is so narrow and most of the time you have to walk in the street. And everybody talks to everybody else whether they know them or not or if they do not talk they smile. There are lots of Portuguese and they have beautiful eyes and lovely voices like Isolde’s. I think Mr. Dugald means it’s them who have crowded out the solid aristocracy, but they are nice for they make it seem just like I was in a foreign land. But most, most of all, I like the docks. Mr. Dugald laughs at me when I call them docks; but I always forget to call them wharves. They are all gray and crookedy, as though they were leaning against one another and when the tide goes out it leaves the posts all shiny and green. And there are funny little houses all along the edge of the beach that are something like the boathouses of Cascade Lake, only more interesting and people live right in them and have flower boxes all around them and fix up weeny verandas over the water and go in bathing right out of their front doors. And some of them are fish lofts only Mr. Dugald says that consolidated companies (I do not exactly know what he means but will write it because he said it) have bought out all the small fish companies and that means that the men do not get enough for their ‘catch’ to pay for the expense and danger of their going out to sea. He says the Portuguese are satisfied to only get a little. Everyone knows Lavender and they let him go anywhere and on to the boats and everything and I follow him, though at first the little rowboats which Mr. Dugald calls dorys smelled so that it made me sick. But I did not want even Lavender to think I was afraid so I held my nose inside and went wherever he did. I cannot wear anything but my old clothes—but no one dresses up here like Pola probably does, which is a disappointment, for Vick let me bring her cherry crÊpe de chine for she is very sure Godmother Jocelyn will get her some new dresses and I am simply dying to wear it.

“And now I must tell you about the good ship Arabella. It is a very old boat—I think it is a schooner—and Mr. Dugald says it has probably been in every port in the world. When it got too old to sail any more Mr. Dugald bought it for Lavender. And it is all Lavender’s own. I am sure I never heard of anyone before having a real big boat just to play on. But, then, Lavender is different. It is fastened with a great big anchor and can’t move only when the water is in it swings around on it just as though it was going. And when the water is out the boat is up real high and looks so funny and lopsided, like that dreadful old drunken man who walked past school one day. Mr. Dugald and Lavender took me out to the Arabella the very first day. We went out in a rowboat—I mean dory, and Mr. Dugald rowed. Oh, it was so thrilling, my heart sang within my breast. It seemed as though I was going far out to sea and the little waves danced and were so blue and everything smelled so salty and there were boats all around and some of them moving with big sails and a three-masted schooner went right close to us—I mean we went right close to it because it was fastened—and I could breathe only with difficulty I was so excited. Dear friend—at that moment I said to myself I did not mind my relatives not living in a big house on an eminence. This, meaning all the boats and the lovely docks and things, is worth my quest. It was very hazardous climbing on to the Arabella for it wiggled so but at last we were on and then!—Oh! Do you know, it was like a pirate’s ship. And it has a wheel and a little house and the cutest cabins downstairs and a funny little kitchen. I am going to ask Aunt Achsa—I have decided to call her that because she seems too old to be a cousin—to let me cook out on the Arabella. Mr. Dugald will not let Lavender cook on it for fear he will set the boat on fire. It would be funny to have a boat burn right in the water, but then I have read of ships that burned at sea. Mr. Dugald has fixed everything up real nice and he goes out a lot and draws. He says that as long as I know how to swim I can go out anytime with Lavender. It is certainly the most different thing I ever dreamed of doing and next best to sailing far away on a young boat. The boat rocked like a cradle and we laid down on the deck in the sun and it was a delightful sensation. I am going to take books out there and I will sometime take you, dear friend, and write in you as I rock upon the bosom of the ocean—though this is a bay it is ocean water.

“Next most exciting to the Arabella was going to the backside which is what they call the other side of the Cape the side that is on the outside on the map. We tramped over for Mr. Dugald says that is the only way to navigate on Cape Cod. It was not the least bit hot for there was such a lovely breeze and the road is hard and right through sand hills that looked awfully big and just have a little grass on them and funny little trees. Mr. Dugald told me that the heavy winds keep shifting the sand and that after ever and ever so many years the whole Cape will be moved and maybe was somewhere else a long time ago and the State of Massachusetts is planting a lot of pine trees to hold it where it is now and that the reason the trees look so small is that every fall and winter when the big storms come they blow the sand over them until they are almost buried. I suppose if one could dig down you would find a big tree. Mr. Dugald told me all this as we walked over the dunes. He told me how after one big storm years and years ago the school children went to school and found it buried under sand right up to the roof. I wish that would happen to my school. But that is how different this place is. Well, we finally came to a ridge of sand that was bigger and higher than any of the others so that it took my breath to climb it like the trail back of Cascade and then when I got to the top it was so beautiful that I felt hurt inside and felt afraid. Before me, dear friend, swept the endless ocean. And as far as eye could see there was naught but sand. And you seemed close enough to the blue in the sky to touch it. You felt it the way you do the furnace when you go into the furnace room. And not a living being anywhere around, except us. And the beach is the loveliest beach I ever dreamed of—and you see it is the first real beach I have ever seen. It is wide and hard and part of it is wet where the big waves roll in and it moans beautifully. And there are lots of little funny flowers, like wild sweet peas, and pretty grasses grow on it and the sand up away from the water is white and glistens like jewels. I did not like to go near the water at first for the waves looked like angry monsters with tossing white manes tearing in at me with their arms raised to clutch me. But I kept close to Mr. Dugald who sometimes goes in swimming right in the breakers. And he pointed out the Coast Guard Station which was a cute little white house nestled in the sand dunes and he told me there was a man up in the square tower who was watching us and every move we made and if a wave did catch us he’d give the alarm and a lifeguard would dash out in a minute and save us. That would be very exciting but it did not tempt me. We picked up beautiful shells on the beach and I poked a horrid jelly fish and then we visited the Station where the men were very nice and showed us everything. The big man who is Commander Nelson told us how the sand when it blows against the windows of the house turns the glass all funny and frosted so that you cannot see out of it, and he said they have to keep putting in new glass every few days. And Mr. Dugald told me as we walked back how the men from the Coast Guard Stations patrol the shores of our country so that there is not a bit of our seacoast that is not guarded. One starts out from one station and meets another from another station and they exchange little checks which they take back so that their commanders know they have been all the way. Is it not a lovely feeling to think that as we sleep someone is watching our shores by night? Only I wonder how if there are any pirates, and Captain Davies said there still were, they can land anywhere without one of these guards seeing them. Maybe they wait until the watchmen start back with their checks.

“I must now tell you of my new acquaintances.

“First there is Aunt Achsa and Lavender of whom I have written. Second, there is the boarder. His name is Dugald Allan which I think is a perfectly lovely name. I am sorry to say he is an artist. I would have preferred that he had been a fisherman. When I told him that he laughed very hard. He laughs at me a great deal which I did not like at first and then I decided it is his nature and he cannot help it. He spends every summer with Aunt Achsa and says he is her half-nephew. Even though he gave the Arabella to Lavender I think he must be a poor artist because his clothes look old and have no style. He knows everyone and everyone calls him Dug. At first I thought it was horrid visiting a relative who kept boarders but afterwards I learned that here in Provincetown someone else lives in nearly all the houses besides the families, because they are not nearly enough houses for all the people who want to come to Provincetown. Mr. Dugald says that artists and poets and musicians come here from all over the world for the inspiration. I cannot tell the men artists from the fishermen for they wear things like sailors but the women artists all wear big hats and smocks all covered with paint. I am sure I saw a poet yesterday and I do not know what a musician would look like and Mr. Dugald said he did not know, either. That was one of the times when he laughed. But I said then and repeat now that there are enough other people around so that I do not mind the artists and poets.

“Third of my acquaintance is Captain Phin Davies. Aunt Achsa says he is very rich, that he was smart enough to buy up a lot of fishing boats and a storage house of his own and he could laugh at the Boston and New York people. But he used to sail a boat like Cousin Zeke’s which is what they call my relative. And he is very, very nice and invited me to go to Wellfleet and visit him and his wife and Aunt Achsa says she does not see no harm in my going. Aunt Achsa’s grammar is so bad that I blush to write it here.

“Fourth, Martie Calkins who is Mrs. Eph Calkins’ granddaughter and lives in the house next to Aunt Achsa’s. She is very different from the girls I know at school and Nancy would shudder if she saw her for Nancy is so sensitive, but then this is not Middletown and I am sensitive like Nancy and Mart is just my age and she can go out on the Arabella with us, though she told me confidentially that her grandmother thought Achsa Green stark daffy to trust Lavender out of her sight. Mart does not think about Lavender the way Mr. Dugald taught me to think. She can tell the grandest stories of the sea because her father and grandfather were fishermen who went out on big boats and her father was lost at sea so she is an aristocrat, too. She is going to show me how to dig clams tomorrow. And we are going to the moving pictures on Saturday. It seems very queer and like home to have moving pictures here but Mr. Dugald says they are like the poor. To quote him exactly, ‘Alas, the movies—like the poor, we have always with us!’ He says very queer things.

“Fifth, Miss Letitia Vine, a most picturesque character. I quoted Mr. Dugald then for I did not know people could be picturesque. No one but Miss Letty herself knows how old she is and she won’t tell. Aunt Achsa said she paid to have the date and year of her mother’s death scratched off her tombstone so folks couldn’t figure out her age. But she is very cultured and is a music teacher, only a funny one. She drives all over this part of the Cape and gives music lessons. She has done it for years and years, Aunt Achsa calculates she has worn out three horses teaching folks their notes. She stays in one town two or three days sleeping round with her pupils and then hitches up and drives to the next. She scorns a Ford. Mr. Dugald says he’s thankful for that for a Ford would spoil the most perfect thing on the Cape. She looks like the figurehead of a ship (again quoting Mr. Dugald) and she isn’t afraid of man or beast. She and Mr. Dugald are very good friends and Mr. Dugald took me there to call and I think he told her that I was the daughter of a poet, because she looked at me like that though he had promised not to and I hate to think he broke his promise. She has very interesting things in her house that she has picked up from all over the Cape as she gave her music lessons. I guess she does not have many pupils now but Aunt Achsa said Letty Vine would have to die in the harness so that is probably why she keeps going.

“Sixth is Mr. Commander Nelson at the Coast Guard Station who invited me to come to see him again. He said if he needed a hand at any time he’d send for me. It would be exciting to help save souls from a wreck at sea. I would like to even see one though that sounds wicked and I must curb my thirst for adventure.

“Jed Starrows is not an acquaintance but I intend to know more about him. When anyone speaks of him they put such a funny tone in their voices. I asked Mr. Dugald if he is aristocratic too and he laughed and said he most certainly is not. But he owns a big boat—an auxiliary schooner that is the fastest one here and he has just bought out a fish company and Aunt Achsa says it beats everything where he gets his money because he wasn’t much more than a common clam-digger a year or so ago. But I will record here that Captain Davies spoke of Jed Starrows as though he might know something about pirates and I mean to find out if I can.

“Enough now, dear friend—my arm aches and I must stop. Adieu for the nonce—”