Lucy: Daughters of the Sea #3 Read Online Free Page B

them.”
    “Absolutely! Listen to your father, dear!” Marjorie Snow had resumed her knitting. “Like dancing. You’ve danced before. Such opportunities …”
    Tennis, dancing — opportunities for marriage , Lucy thought as she returned her gaze to the coastline. The train seemed to be devouring the track, and the coastline fled by, but then new vistas would open up, and the boundless sea stretched before her.
    “I’m so glad, Stephen,” Marjorie Snow said as she picked up a dropped stitch, “that the church decided to pay for first-class compartments on the train and the steamer.”
    “First class all the way. We have to arrive in style, for the good of St. Luke’s. We must reflect well on our church. They don’t invite just any Episcopal priest to go to the Little Chapel by the Sea.”
    “Yes, of course. And you see, Lucy, that is why you must enter into all the young people’s activities. We must all reflect well.”
    “We are emissaries of the church,” her father said, rather grandly.
    “You mean like missionaries?” Lucy asked.
    “Heavens, no!” her mother exclaimed. “We aren’t here to proselytize. Good gracious. It’s Bar Harbor, not Africa! Father was saying that we must reflect well on the church. We must shine. Be our best.”
    Lucy was trying to process what her parents were saying. It sounded like a fashion show. She pictured an immense oval mirror holding the reflections of the three of them in their new summer wardrobes. Her father in his summer clerics. Herself in one of the lawn cotton tea dance dresses, and her mother in her walking suit. The images changed — new outfits. Her father in his formal dress clerics for an evening event, her mother in an evening gown of ice blue silk, and herself in a ball gown of sea-foam green silk and lace that Mrs. Simpson said set off the deep green of her eyes.
    There was a sudden knocking on their compartment door.
    The Reverend Snow stood up and opened the door. It was the conductor. “Next stop Boston, South Station. Porter will meet you on the platform with your trunks. You’ve booked a cab?”
    “Yes, sir. My secretary made the arrangements for our transport to the steamer dock in the harbor.”
    “Fine, fine, Reverend.” The conductor seemed to linger a moment. Lucy saw her father jerk to attention.
    “Oh!” His hand reached in his pocket. She saw him pull out a half-dollar coin. He flushed slightly as the conductor took the coin.
    As soon as the door closed, Marjorie Snow whispered, “A half-dollar, Stephen?”
    “We can’t appear cheap, my dear,” he said brightly. “We are going to be consorting with Van Wycks, Astors, Bellamys — the whole lot!”
    Lucy’s parents beamed at each other. They had never appeared more ecstatic.
    And she, too, felt a thrill surge through her as she stepped off the train. She sniffed the air. The scent of the sea threaded through the coal fumes of the locomotive’s steamy belches. Salt air! One never caught such a scent in New York.
    She inhaled deeply as they followed the porter with their four steamer trunks. She ran a bit ahead to catch up with the fellow.
    “Pardon me, sir, but how close are we to the sea?”
    “The habber?” he asked. She realized that he meant harbor , but with his thick Boston accent, the r had vanished.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Not far, missy. Take the cab twenty minutes but that’s because of the traffic. Less than half a mile to Lincoln wharf, where you catch the steamuh.” He had a plain-as-pudding face, and his hair, which stuck out under his cap, was the color of pale carrots. She detected a slight Irish lilt, which she found lovely.
    When they arrived at the wharf, she was nearly overwhelmed with the most marvelous sensations. She took off her bonnet, faced into the breeze, and flung back her head. A hairpin came undone and the carefully wound bun fell loose, cascading in ripples down her back. The wind caught it and whipped it in streams across her face.
    “Lucy,