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By Root 479 0

having a chum who could talk French. She continued to sit on the wharf long after Dovie had gone home. She liked to sit on the wharf and watch the fishing-boats going out and coming in, and sometimes a ship drifting down the harbour bound to fair lands far away… ‘far, far away’; Nan repeated the words to herself with a relish. They savoured of magic. Like Jem, she often wished she could sail away in a ship… down the blue harbour, past the bar of shadowy dunes, past the lighthouse point where at night the revolving Four Winds Light became an outpost of mystery, out, out to the blue mist that was the summer gulf, on, on to enchanted islands in golden morning seas. Nan flew on the wings of her imagination all over the world as she squatted there on the old sagging wharf.

But this afternoon she was all keyed up over Dovie’s secret. Would Dovie really tell her? What would it be… what could it be? And what about those girls Father might have married? Nan liked to speculate about those girls. One of them might have been her mother. But that was horrible. Nobody could be her mother except Mother. The thing was simply unthinkable.

‘I think Dovie Johnson is going to tell me a secret,’ Nan confided to Mother that night when she was being kissed bye-bye. ‘Of course I won’t be able to tell even you, Mummy, because I’ve promised I wouldn’t. You won’t mind, will you, Mummy?’

‘Not at all,’ said Anne, much amused.

When Nan went down to the wharf the next day she took the parasol. It was her parasol, she told herself. It had been given to her, so she had a perfect right to do what she liked with it. Having quieted her conscience with this sophistry, she slipped away when nobody could see her. It gave her a pang to think of giving her her dear, gay little parasol, but by this time the craze to find out what Dovie knew had become too strong to be resisted.

‘Here’s the parasol, Dovie,’ she said breathlessly. ‘And now tell me the secret.’

Dovie was really taken aback. She had never meant matters to go as far as this… she had never believed Nan Blythe’s mother would let her give away her red parasol. She pursed her lips.

‘I don’t know as that shade of red will suit my complexion after all. It’s rather gaudy. I guess I won’t tell.’

Nan had a spirit of her own and Dovie had not yet quite charmed it into blind submission. Nothing roused it more quickly than injustice.

‘A bargain is a bargain, Dovie Johnson. You said the parasol for the secret. Here is the parasol and you’ve got to keep your promise.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Dovie in a bored way.

Everything grew very still. The gusts of wind had died away. The water stopped glug-glugging round the piles of the wharf. Nan shivered with delicious ecstasy. She was going to find out at last what Dovie knew.

‘You know the Jimmy Thomases down at the Harbour Mouth,’ said Dovie. ‘Six-toed Jimmy Thomas?’

Nan nodded. Of course she knew the Thomases… at least, knew of them. Six-toed Jimmy sometimes called at Ingleside selling fish. Susan said you never could be sure of getting good ones from him. Nan did not like the look of him. He had a bald head, with a fluff of curly white hair on either side of it, and a red, hooked nose. But what could the Thomases possibly have to do with the matter?

‘And you know Cassie Thomas?’ went on Dovie.

Nan had seen Cassie Thomas once when Six-toed Jimmy had brought her round with him in his fish-wagon. Cassie was just about her own age, with a mop of red curls and bold, greenish-grey eyes. She had stuck her tongue out at Nan.

‘Well…’ Dovie drew a long breath… ‘this is the truth about you. You are Cassie Thomas and she is Nan Blythe.’

Nan stared at Dovie. She hadn’t the faintest glimmer of Dovie’s meaning. What she had said made no sense.

‘I… I… what do you mean?’

‘It’s plain enough, I should think,’ said Dovie with a pitying smile. Since she had been forced to tell this she was going to make it worth the telling. ‘You and her were born the same night. It was when the Thomases lived in the Glen. The nurse took her down to Thomases and put her in your cradle and