Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as if their hearts would break.
How right- how incredibly, utterly right- and how impossible!
She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read.
From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own.
There was something irresistible about popcorn.
I have no word of yours to assure me that our brief friendship held for you the same significance it held for me, but I must go on believing so. Every hope of the future is meaningless unless I have faith that you and I will share it together.
All the way up the river she’s been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you’ll both have to wait. I’m not going to disappoint her, Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it’s going to be for keeps.
If you ask me, it’s all that schooling. It takes the fun out of life, being cooped up like that day after day... Books, now that’s different. There’s nothing like a book to keep you company of a long voyage.
It is the hate that is the enemy. Not men. Hate does not die with killing. It only springs up a hundredfold. The only thing stronger than hate is love.
The girl looked about her. “’ Tis a pretty room,” she said without thinking, and then wondered how that could be, when it was so plain and bare. Perhaps it was only the sunlight on boards that were scrubbed smooth and white, or perhaps it was the feeling of peace that lay across the room as tangibly as the bar of sunshine.
A man’s first loyalty is to the soil he stands on.
She saw now that she could not tell him about the books she had loved any more than she could make him see the palm trees swaying under a brilliant blue sky.
Yes, I do think William is serious. But you don’t need to be worried, dear. No one is going to hurry you, least of all William himself. He is a very fine young man. Of course you feel like strangers now. But I think you’ll find sufficient to talk about before long.
If only I could be here alone, without Judith or anyone, she thought with longing. Someday I am going to come back to this place, when there is time just to stand still and look at it. How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart.
Hannah’s magic cure for every ill,” Nat had said. “Blueberry cake and a kitten.” Kit smiled to see it working its charm on Prudence. But there was an invisible ingredient that made the cure unfailing. The Bible name for it was love.
Then, unbelievably, out of the mist came the miracle. First two points of mast, then sails, transparent and wraithlike in the fog, then, as Kit strained her eyes, the looming hull, the prow, and the curved tail of a fish. The Dolphin! Glory be to heaven! The most beautiful sight in the world! The Dolphin, moving down toward Wright’s Island on a steady breeze.
The one small room the house contained was scoured as a seashell. There was a table, a chest, a bedstead with a faded quilt, a spinning wheel, and a small loom. A few ancient kettles hung about the clean-swept hearth. From a square of sunlight on the floor an enormous yellow cat opened one eye to look at them.
Tis so beautiful – flowers every day of the year. You can always smell them in the air, even out to sea.
As Kit reached the part about the schoolmaster and his cane, to her amazement a rusty chuckle interrupted her. Hannah’s face had crumpled into a thousand gleeful wrinkles.
I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they’ve done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven’t they?