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exclaimed. “So you’re staying with Lady Bonkers.”
    â€œShe’s my aunt,” Emma said a little stiffly.
    â€œSorry about that. It’s what my granny calls her. She’s known her a long time. The whole family … the first wife who died, and the second wife. Granny says that one was pretty nice.”
    â€œThe second one was my grandmother. She died before I was born. I thought she and my grandfather moved to Connecticut a hundred years ago,” Emma said.
    â€œWell, my granny isn’t that old. She used to sail one of your grandfather’s boats. But she had to stop. When your aunt would come home from boarding school to visit her father, it would make her mad to see old Granny out there on the bay in a sailboat, tacking and coming about and hoisting the sails like an America’s Cup winner.” The girl threw back her head and laughed. Emma had to smile, too.
    â€œYou must be Alberta,” she said.
    â€œCall me Bertie,” said the girl.
    â€œMy aunt said you have a blazing talent with watercolors,” Emma said.
    â€œWow!” cried Bertie. “I can’t paint the side of a barn.” She stooped to sift through Emma’s collection of shells and stones. “I used to make little heaps of things when I first came out here,” she said. “Let’s go down the beach.”
    As she walked alongside of Bertie, Emma felt that, at last, her spirit was rising. She imagined it was the way you felt when the sailboat you were in caught the wind.
    â€œGranny and your Aunt Bea don’t see each other these days,” Bertie told her. “The last time, Granny made her supper because your uncle had to go somewhere. Your aunt never stopped talking about a friend of hers who, she said, was the world’s greatest cook. It makes you feel grim, Granny said. You know she’s trying to make you feel bad. Like telling you I was so good at painting. Did you show her a watercolor you’d done? That would have set her off. What’s that book?”
    â€œI didn’t show her anything,” said Emma.
    She held out the book and Bertie took it quickly but with a gentle hand. Emma liked that. Most kids grabbed things from you. “Pretty interesting,” Bertie commented, looking through the pages. “I might have gone on collecting if I’d had this.”
    â€œHow long do you stay out here?” asked Emma.
    â€œUntil school starts,” Bertie replied. “My mother and father go to Denmark most summers to visit our relatives. I’ve never wanted to go with them. But I guess I’ll have to next summer. I love it out here with Granny. We have a good time together.”
    â€œLook at the sun,” Emma said. Both girls halted. The great red ball of fire was sinking behind a line of low hills in the west.
    â€œAre you coming down to the beach tomorrow?” Bertie asked.
    â€œI’m coming down every day, early, even if there’s a storm,” Emma said. “I like to get out of that house.”
    â€œYeah,” Bertie said softly.

7
    The Village by the Sea
    When had the idea struck Emma and Bertie? Was it there all the time they roamed the beach, searching for shells they could match up with illustrations in Emma’s book? It must have grown slowly, the way light comes at dawn, and gradually reveals an island or a hill, a forest, that has been hidden by the dark.
    They picked up other things beside shells; blue and green beach glass roughened by tide and wind and the abrasion of the sand, bits of wood as smooth as satin, a buckle from a belt, corks, a few glass bottles, stones of many shapes, and seaweed dry as paper, green sea lettuce and rockweed and Irish moss. There were egg capsules, too, devil’s purse black as ink, and the hard little collars where moon snails had lived. There were the shells of worm snails, spirals and corkscrews white as chalk, and sponges which were gray or yellow and