more and said, "yes, we might," and that he was "a dear," which was
what we thought.

We decided that we would write immediately, so Jerry dashed off to
Father's study and got two sheets of nice thin paper with "17 Luke
Street" at the top in humpy green letters, and I borrowed Aunt
Ailsa's fountain-pen, which turned out to be empty. I might have
known it, for they always are empty when you need them most. Jerry,
like a goose, filled it over the clean paper we were going to use
for the letter, and it slobbered blue ink all over the top sheet.
But the under one wasn't hurt, and we thought one page full would be
all we could write, anyway. We took the things out to the porch
table, and Greg held down the corner of the paper so it wouldn't
flap while I wrote. Jerry sat on the arm of my chair and thought so
excitedly that it jiggled me.

But minutes went on, and the fountain pen began to ooze from being
too full, and none of us could think of a single thing to say.

"If we just write to him ourselves,--in our own form, I mean," Jerry
said, "it'll be stupid. And I don't feel maroonish here on the
porch. We'll have to wait till we go to Wecanicut again, and write
from there."

I felt somehow the way Jerry did, so we put away the things again
and went out under the hemlock tree to talk about the Castaway. Greg
didn't come, and we supposed he'd gone to feed a tame toad he had
that year, or something. The toad lived under the syringa bush
beside the gate, and Greg insisted that it came out when he whistled
for it, but it never would perform when we went on purpose to watch