The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [82]
Nat is New England, too, she thought, like John Holbrook and Uncle Matthew. Why have I never seen that he is one of them? Under that offhand way of his, there is the same rock. Hannah has leaned on it for years. And I refused to see.
Was it too late? He asked me to go, she reminded herself. But what did he mean? Only that he could never bear to see anyone in trouble? And he came back. He risked the whipping post to come back and help me. But he took the same risk to rescue a yellow cat!
After a long time Kit started slowly home. The sun slanted low in the sky, and behind her there began a sweet, disturbing melody. Peepers, Judith had said, the little frogs that lived in the swamp, and why should the sound of them tear at her heart? "Too late? Too late?" they queried, over and over, and she fled along the road to the house where she could shut herself away from them.
From that moment in the meadow Kit ceased to plan at all. She only waited. Somehow she found a way to meet every trading ship that came up the river. How beautiful these proud little sailing ships were! She never glimpsed their spreading sails without an answering surge of her spirits. Yet every new mast that rounded the bend of the river brought at the same time a fresh plunge of disappointment. Always she waited, her eyes straining to make out the figure on the prow, and always, at the sight of those strange, glistening white figureheads, her heart sank. Why did the Dolphin not come?
On the second day of May, as she came out on Wethersfield landing, a trim little ketch was already tied up, fresh-painted, with clean white canvas and not a barnacle on its hull. It must have been newly launched.
The wharf was a confusion of unloading and bartering. A seaman in a blue coat bent to check a row of barrels, and as he straightened up, even before he turned or before she consciously recognized him, Kit began to run.
"Nat!" The greeting burst from her. He turned and saw her, and then he was running, too. As he caught her hands she came to a stop, the wharf, the ship, and Nat himself swinging in a dizzy arc before her eyes.
"Kit? It is Kit, isn't it? Not Mistress Ashby?"
"Oh no, Nat! No!"
"I thought the old Dolphin would never make it!"
The blue gaze was too intense. She had to look away, and abruptly she was conscious of the crowded dock. She pulled her hands away and stepped back, trying, too late, to retrieve her dignity.
"H-how is Hannah?" she stammered.
"Chipper as a sandpiper. She and Gran have been fine company for each other."
"And the Dolphin? Did something happen to her?"
"Just a heavy blow. She's hove down for repairs at the yard. What do you think of the new ketch?"
"She's lovely." Then something in his tone made her look at him more sharply. The blue coat with brass buttons was brand new, and pride sparkled over Nat like the shiny paint on the new vessel. "Nat—you mean—you can't mean she's yours?"
"All but a few payments. By the end of a good summer's trade she'll be every inch mine from stem to stern."
"I can't believe it! She's beautiful, Nat—even more beautiful than the Dolphin!"
"Have you noticed her name?"
Kit leaned sideways to see the letters painted jauntily on the transom. "The WITCH! How did you dare? Does Hannah know?"
"Oh, she's not named after Hannah. I hadn't gone ten miles down the river that day before I knew I'd left the real witch behind."
She did not dare to look up at him. "Can I see her, Nat?" she asked instead. "Will you take me on board?"
"No, not yet." His voice was full of decision. "I want to see your uncle first. Kit—" His words came in an unpremeditated rush. "Will he think it is enough—the new ketch? There'll be a house someday, in Saybrook, or here in Wethersfield if you like. I've thought of nothing else all winter. In November we'll sail south, to the Indies. In the summer—"
"In the summer Hannah and I will have a garden!"
"Kit—" He glanced ruefully about the busy wharf. "Of all the places