Jane went over to him, smiling in her friendly way. The boy slipped down from his rock with the grace of a wild animal. Jane thought that she had never seen a more beautiful and charming looking boy. Very tall and with a small well-set head, he had the unmistakable look of race.

“I am Jane Pellew and this is Allen Breckenbridge,” said Jane with a strange little thrill as she realized that she had used Breck’s full name in the introduction.

She stretched out her hand and it was taken with the greatest poise and courteousness. “I am Frederick Gray,” he said, dropping her hand and giving Breck a cordial little nod.

His voice had the peculiar quality of keeping the same tone, never rising or falling at the end of a sentence, and there seemed to be a definite spacing between each word. It did not, however, produce the monotonous, sing-song effect that Jane had so often noticed in the New Englanders’ voices. The boy’s voice was full and rich and soothing.

“I didn’t see you until you stood up,” Jane told him.

“No wonder, my clothes are just the color of the rocks. I sometimes feel that I am really part of this island, do you know,” Frederick Gray said with a trace of wistfulness. “We watched your yacht come in the other night. I was afraid you would go away without my seeing any of you.”

Jane wondered who “we” were. She had an odd feeling that the boy was the only person who stayed on the island, for as he had said, he did seem such a part of it.

Her wonder was short lived, for as she and Breck and the boy went up a narrow rocky path, approaching the first of the group of houses, two tow-headed little boys emerged from the bushes and ran scuttling into the open door of the house.

Breck called after them reassuringly, “Hey, Buddies! Come back, we won’t hurt you!”

Frederick Gray smiled and told them that they were his youngest brothers and that they were afraid because they weren’t used to seeing anybody but his mother and father and his oldest sister.

“She is away at school now, so they will probably be afraid of her when she comes back.”

“What in the world is she doing away at school this time of the year?” said Jane, in surprise.

“I meant college; she is at Columbia in the summer school,” the boy explained, adding rather proudly, “I am going to New York and live with her this winter, because Daddy wants me to go to Horace Mann before I go to Yale.”

“You are sure you have got time to show your island and sure you don’t mind it,” Breck asked, feeling that if he were the owner of such a near future he would no doubt be very busy.

“You don’t know how glad I am to see people. I’m always so glad when people come on the island. It is really a pleasure to show them around. You know, of course, that this was once a quarry, and at one time several hundred workmen lived here.”

“We didn’t know it, but we certainly should have if we had given any notice to that huge crane and all those slabs of granite heaped up on the beach. The workmen, of course, lived in those cottages?” asked Breck interestedly.

“I wish Daddy would come out and tell you about it, because he knows so much more about it than I do, though I was a little boy when we first came here. There is an awful lot of machinery connected with the quarry; I never have been interested in it, and so don’t know very much about it. Daddy knows all about every kind of machine. But I can’t disturb him now because he is working on his plans for some sort of submarine detector,” the boy told them as he led them past his vine-covered home towards a frame building about a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide.

“How did you happen to come here to live? You don’t mind me calling you Fred, do you?” Jane asked as they entered the strangely shaped building.

“My uncle had the contract to build a sea wall and he knew that granite was on this island. He found that it would be cheaper to start a quarry here and carry it over to where they were building the sea wall than it would be to have to transport it from some other point much farther away. After the sea wall was finished and there wasn’t any more use for operating the quarry, my uncle took his workmen and they went back to their regular working place. Then, you see, my uncle didn’t like to leave all these houses and machinery without some one as a sort of overseer, and as Daddy likes to be quiet so he can work on his inventions, they got together and made arrangements for us to come out here.”

“Don’t you ever get bored or lonesome,” Breck asked the boy.

“It was more fun before my sister went away, of course, but there really is plenty to do. I made enough money off lobsters last year to buy that boat you passed on the way in and then, of course, there are an awful lot of books Daddy brought with us.”

“Breck,” said Jane, wrinkling her forehead, “why couldn’t Fred sail Tim Reynolds’ boat back to Nantucket?”

Breck looked at the boy and shook his head. “Too much for him to handle by himself.”

But the boy’s face lit up at Jane’s words. “What size is she?”

“Thirty feet, Tim said, didn’t he, Jane?”

“I could trim the jib aft and handle her all right,” the boy said with such confidence that Breck would have believed him if he had said he intended to give Thomas Lipton and his “Shamrock IV” time and come in ahead of him.

“Don’t you suppose you could get some other boy to go along with you, so it wouldn’t work you so hard?” Jane said, rather amused by Breck’s rapid change of expression.

“Virg Bradford over on the mainland might go. I’ll row over and see and let you know tonight.” The boy was delighted at the prospect of a real sail.

“Then suppose you just come in time for supper and we can talk it over with Mr. Wing and Tim and see what they say,” said Breck, not considering it worth while to mention consulting Fred’s father, as it was evident from the boy’s account of the inventor and from his own quick way of deciding things, that he was the man of the family.

Fred walked them the length of the building, telling them that it was the polishing room.

“You look mighty thinky,” Breck said to Jane, noticing that she had wrinkled up her forehead again.

“I believe it is a real thought, too, this time. I was just thinking that this long building might have been some ancient dining hall. You know the kind where ‘the eagles scream in the roof trees.’ With all these cottages and this for a sort of mess room, I don’t see why some one couldn’t make a lot of money running this place as a sort of summer col............