What made life at Sunset Lane so delightful to Sidney was that she never knew from one day to the next what she was going to do. Back at Middletown everything was always arranged ahead—they did this on Tuesday and this on Wednesday and always on Saturday there was the League. At Sunset Lane she did not even know when it was Tuesday or Thursday unless she stopped to think; jolly things happened as though they popped out of the blue ether.

Like that Miss Letty dropped in one evening after supper.

“Do you want to ride over to Wellfleet with me enough to be ready at six o’clock?” she asked Sidney very casually, as though it were nothing at all to suggest. Sidney had longed to ride with Miss Letty in the sideboard buggy behind King who, Mr. Dugald declared, had come off the Ark with Noah. And to go to Wellfleet, perhaps see her friend Cap’n Phin Davies!

“Can we call on Cap’n Davies?” she asked eagerly.

Miss Letty smiled. “I reckon I couldn’t steer King away from Elizy Davies’ house. I thought I’d take you there and leave you while I give my lessons and then I’d ride ’round and have a visit with Elizy and Phin and maybe some of Elizy’s gingerbread. Elizy and I went to school together.”

The next morning Sidney was ready and on her, way to Miss Letty’s house before six o’clock. She had been far too excited to eat any of the breakfast Aunt Achsa had set out for her but Miss Letty, guessing this, made her sit down and eat a bit of toast and a boiled egg.

“It’s a long way between here and Wellfleet and King’s slower than he used to be.”

Seated next to Miss Letty, jogging along through the misty morning, Sidney could not speak for pure rapture of delight. She had never ridden behind a horse in her life! She thought King a giant steed; with every swish of his long tail her heart skipped a beat, the move of his great muscles under his heavy flanks held her fascinated gaze. Miss Letty talked to him as though he were human and the animal understood and tossed his head. She said: “Now, King, we’re going to Wellfleet and we got to get there before noon.” And then she let the reins slacken and slip down between her knees as though she had no further care. One certainly could not do that with an automobile! Sidney did not wonder now that Miss Letty preferred King to a Ford.

She wished she dared ask Miss Letty how old King really was but she did not think it polite anymore than if she asked Miss Letty how old she was. King was not handsome, he was bony like his mistress, but he certainly understood everything. Miss Letty said he knew they were going to Elizy Davies’ by the way he loped ahead; King, too, had a strong liking for Elizy Davies’ gingerbread.

“She feeds it to him in great hunks. And he won’t eat anyone else’s gingerbread, either. Scornful as you please even when I offer him some. Now I say that’s discriminating for a horse. I suppose it’s what folks call horse-sense.”

Sidney did not know which she liked better, watching the gleaming marshes through which the highway wound or listening to Miss Letty’s spasmodic conversation. Miss Letty pointed out old landmarks to Sidney, then told her something of the school at Truro to which she and Elizy Davies had gone, then of the little girls to whom she was about to give music lessons. She had taught their mothers. Then she lapsed into a deep silence broken only by an occasional “cl-lk” to King which she made with her tongue against her teeth and to which King paid no attention except for a flick of his right ear.

Sidney, looking down at the great bony hands limply holding the reins, thought it very funny to picture them on the keyboard of a piano. If she had spoken her thoughts aloud Miss Letty would have told her, quite calmly, that she couldn’t play a note now, but that she knew when notes were played right and she could still rap lagging fingers smartly across the knuckles. Folks would have her, anyway. Sidney did not know, of course, that Miss Letty was a tradition and that Cape Cod clings to its traditions.

“You’ll think Phin Davies’ house the queerest thing you ever saw. It isn’t a house nor is it a boat; it’s as much one as t’other and not anything, I’d say, but what two crazy men getting their heads together rigged up. Cap’n Davies said as long as he had to live ashore he wanted his house to look like a boat, he didn’t care what folks said, and he hunted the Cape over to find a builder who wouldn’t apply to have him locked up in an asylum, straight off. He got a man from Falmouth, who’d been a master once on a trader and sort of knew how Phin Davies felt. But there was Elizy carrying on awful about it and saying she’d always looked forward to the time when she could have a nice house—and there the two of them were. And the house is as ’tis. Phin has the front of it that’s as like the bow of a ship without any rigging as they could make it, and Elizy has the back that’s got as up-to-date a kitchen as any on Cape Cod.”

A winding road, all sweet with wild primroses led up to the queer house on the eminence. Sure enough, there was the front part like the forward hull of a ship, deck-houses and all; and the back like any sensible New England home. Sidney giggled delightedly.

“But there aren’t two finer people on this Cape!” declared Miss Letty. “And there’s Phin coming to meet us. Reckon he spied King through his glasses along beyond Wellfleet.”

Cap’n Phin Davies was overjoyed to see Sidney. “Why, it’s the little gal I found on the train!” he repeated over and over. “Elizy,” he called lustily toward the kitchen door, “come and see! It’s the little gal I told you ’bout that I found on the train.”

Elizy Davies came hurrying from the kitchen door. She was lean to gauntness and tall and wore round, steel-rimmed glasses low on the sharp bridge of her nose. Sidney immediately understood how she had been able to hold out for her half of the house. But she greeted Sidney with kindly interest and Miss Letty with real affection.

“I thought you’d be over this way today. Anne Matthews said Maida was going to have a lesson. Got my gingerbread all mixed.”

Miss Letty had not gotten out of the buggy. She turned King’s head.

“Thought I’d leave Sidney here while I gave my lessons,” she explained briefly and then clucked to King.

Mrs. Davies took Sidney into her part of the house. It was cool and dark and sweet-smelling and very, very neat. Sidney sat down in a stiff rocker and answered Mrs. Davies’ questions concerning her Aunt Achsa and Lavender, while Cap’n Davies stumped restlessly about.

“Now I cal’late you’ve heard enough, Elizy, and I’m goin’ to carry my little shipmate off and show her my part o’ the old hull.”

Elizy accepted his suggestion with a smile and admitted that she had to finish up her work. Immensely relieved Sidney followed Cap’n Davies. With the enthusiasm of a boy he took her to the front rooms of the house and showed her his treasured possessions. There was not a corner of the globe that had not contributed something to his collection of mementoes. And each meant to the old seafarer, not its own intrinsic value, but a certain voyage. “I got that when we took a cargo to Shanghai. Roughest v’yage I ever ran into,” and “I picked that up when we had to lay to at Buenos Aires ’cause every man jack in the fo’castle had small-pox,” or “found that when Elizy shipped with me on the old Amanda L. Downs. Forget just where—” and so on.

In the cupola on the roof that Cap’n Davies called his lookout and where he spent most of his time, he had put the paraphernalia from the Viking, his last boat. He had rigged up a bunk so that he could even sleep there when he fancied. He explained that he never let Elizy “tidy up.” “When I get a notion I fix things shipshape myself, but I ain’t had a notion now in sometime.” Sidney could see that. Yet the littered room had an individuality that Elizy’s own spotless quarters lacked.

“Now set down on that bunk and let me have a look at you,” the Cap’n commanded, seating himself in an old swivel chair that creaked and trembled under his weight. “’Pears to me you’ve picked up quite a bit!” He smiled his approval and nodded his great head. “Yes, they ain’t starvin’ you and I’d say you’d been runnin’ in the sun and there ain’t anything that can beat our Cape sun for bringin’ out roses on bushes and little gal’s cheeks.” He beamed with satisfaction over his long speech. “Now, tell me, how’s the pirates? Seen any?”

His question came so suddenly that Sidney started. She hesitated, then answered slowly. “Yes, I have.”

“Well, I’ll be dumblasted!” exclaimed the captain, plainly astonished by her answer. He had spoken only in pleasant chaff and had not thought Sidney would take him seriously.

“At least—” Sidney amended, “I think I’ve seen some. I told Lavender and Mart they’re pirates or—or something, and we’re going to watch every move Jed Starrow makes, at least every chance we get—”

The jovial expression suddenly left the Captain’s genial face and a heavy frown furrowed the leathery forehead.

“Jed Starrow! Now what in thunder would make you set on Jed Starrow—”

His frown alarmed Sidney. Perhaps she had made a dreadful mistake in divulging their suspicions of Jed Starrow, suspicions which really Lavender and Mart did not share, except as it helped their fun along—

“Oh, I shouldn’t have said that it’s Jed Starrow we suspect. I heard Mr. Starrow and that—that man with the hook—say something that sounded mysterious and I told the others, Mart and Lav, about it and we’re just pretending that we think they’re pirates! It’s something to do and makes it exciting when we’re down on the wharves. And they do look like pirates—especially the wrecker man. But I ought not to have said their names—as long as it’s only a sort of game we’re playing, ought I? You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Cap’n Davies promised hastily and took Sidney off to see the new heifer calf, just a week old. In the delight of fondling the pretty little creature Sidney forgot her embarrassing break. She did not notice that the Captain seemed deeply absorbed by some thought and that when he was not talking he still frowned.

After she had visited the Cove and watched the waves dash against the Head and explored the boathouse Miss Letty arrived with King and Mrs. Davies summoned them to dinner. They ate dinner in the big kitchen that stretched from one side of the house to the other so that a breeze, all tangy with salt, stirred the heat of the room. Mrs. Elizy and Miss Letty talked and Sidney ate and laughed as Cap’n Phin surreptitiously, and with sly winks at her, fed the old Maltese cat under the table. There were fried chicken and peas and mashed potatoes and the gingerbread and cocoa and flaky cherry pie. And after dinner they all went out to watch King eat the gingerbread of his choice.

Sidney and Miss Letty helped Mrs. Elizy clear up and then they joined Cap’n Phin under the shade of the trees on the Head from where they could see far out over the bay. Sidney stretched on the grass and listened while the others talked, determining to put down every word they said in “Dorothea” so that she could read it over when she was a very old woman. She loved the way Miss Letty answered back to Cap’n Davies when he teased her and she was not the least bit afraid of Mrs. Davies, now. All in all, though it was a very quiet afternoon, it was one Sidney long remembered.

When Miss Letty announced that they’d “have to be starting for home,” Cap’n Davies recollected that there was something in the lookout he wanted to show Sidney and had forgotten. But when they reached the lookout it appeared that he had forgotten again for he sat down in the swivel chair and faced her.

“Looky here,” he commanded in a voice Sidney had not heard before in their brief acquaintance, “don’t know as it’s any o’ my affair but I want you to keep off the wharves after dark. Off the beach, too. Play your games in daylight. Things are shapin’ to a sort o’ head and there may be mischief anytime and you’d best be at home come dark. If you don’t promise me I’ll speak a word to Achsy Green—”

“Oh, I’ll promise,” cried Sidney anxiously. A warning to Aunt Achsa would most likely curtail their precious freedom. But she could not resist the temptation of questioning. “What mischief?” she asked, eagerly.

Cap’n Davies hesitated. Then he drew a letter from his pocket and tapped it with his finger.

“That’s from the Custom House in Boston. Come last week. They’re sending secret service men down to comb the Cape. Been huntin’ the hul coast for a year and a half and they sort o’ suspicion these parts because a lot of ’em was shipped into Boston that—”

“Oh, what! You haven’t said what—” broke in Sidney, aquiver.

“So I didn’t. I’m sailin’ stern first, I cal’late. Well, there’s always smuggling and smuggling and I guess there always will be, but when it comes to diamonds Uncle Sam sets up and takes notice. And they’re suspicionin’ that they’re comin’ in somewheres along the Cape, and this part of the Cape, too. And this—” he shook another sheet in Sidney’s face, “this is a notice of a reward offered by Wellfleet and Truro counties for findin’ the dog that’s givin’ this part of the Cape a bad name! Five thousand dollars. In two weeks it’ll be stuck on every post hereabouts ’s far as Provincetown. And Phin Davies ain’t goin’ to lay to ’till I’ve found out whether it’s someone on the Cape that’s doing it or not. Cape Cod’s brung up a race of honest men who could sleep with their doors wide open and if anybody is hurtin’ the good name of the Cape I want to know it. ’Taint the money I want.”