You never would have guessed that they were really blue.

"It'll do splendidly," I said, for I did think the Castaway man
would like Greg's letter tremendously.

"Better let me see it, my lad," said Jerry, rolling over among the
pine-cones and sitting up.

Greg got his precious letter with a snatch and a squeak, and
scurried off with it. I pitched Jerry back on to the pine-needles,
because I knew he'd never let the thing go if he saw it.

"Oh, _let_ him send it," I said. "It's perfectly all right, and it
will do the Bottle Man heaps of good."

But Jerry growled about "beastly scrawls" and wasn't pleased with me
until supper-time.

Somehow we all began calling our island person the "Bottle Man"
after Greg did, for it seemed as good a name as any for him, seeing
that we didn't know his real one. We read the letter from him after
supper to Aunt Ailsa, and she laughed and liked it, and so did
Father. We also asked Father what the Latin meant, and he made a
funny face and said he'd forgotten such things, but then he looked
at it again and told us it meant something like this:

"The happy hour shall come, all the more appreciated because it
comes unexpectedly."

So we went to bed thinking about our poor old Bottle Man consoling