And here she thought he wasn’t going to help her up. She struggled a little, then reached out her hand.
Eachann walked right past it. “There’s my crop!” He bent down and pulled it out from under her and the journals, then he turned and went back over to the horse. “Thanks, George.” He saluted her with the crop.
“Miss Georgina won’t take us to the cove, Father,” Graham whined.
“She won’t.” He looked back at her. “Why won’t you take them to cove?”
“I never said I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” Kirsty argued. “You said no. En. Oh.”
“Take them to the cove. As you said, that’s what I pay you for.” He mounted the horse and rested an elbow on the saddle. “It’ll do you good. You could use the exercise. A nice little walk in the sand will build strength in your legs. You need some strength in your legs, George. Then you won’t have so much trouble getting up.”
He rode the horse right out of the room, leaving Georgina struggling to get up so she could kill him.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sailing blossoms, silver fishes,
Paven pools as clear as air—
How a child wishes
To live down there!
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Kirsty, Graham, and Miss George walked down the hill to Piper’s Cove. Kirsty and Graham ran ahead, racing to see who would reach the sand first.
“I’m first! I’m first!” Graham hollered like the silly old boy he was.
Kirsty pretended like she didn’t care. “Let’s play firsts! I see the first seagull!” She pointed up at the sky.
“I see the first sand crab!” Graham fell to his knees in the wet sand and scooped up handfuls of sand and scuttling crabs.
“I see the first grass.” Miss George stood in a clump of grass on the dunes near a great pine tree.
Kirsty looked at her. “That’s not plain old grass.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s called poverty grass.”
Miss George looked down at the grass and gave a short laugh. “Oh, then this must be my spot.”
Her voice was flip in that way adults had when they meant just the opposite of what they said and thought.
“Somehow it seems fitting. I’ll sit here.” She plopped down in the grass and looked “moor-rosed.”
Kirsty remembered that spelling word too. Although she could never figure out how the Moors and a rose could mean something very sad, unless the Moors trampled all the roses in Spain.
“I don’t suppose there’s any wealthy grass around here, is there?”
“There’s no such thing as wealthy grass,” Graham informed her in a tone that said he thought she was dumb.
“Rich grass?”
Graham shook his head.
