Chapter 11
recording by maria therese lucy maud montgomery short stories nineteen o two to nineteen o three by lucy maud montgomery our runaway kite of course there was nobody for us to play with on the big half-moon but then as claude says you can't have everything we just had to make the most of each other and we did the big half-moon is miles from anywhere except the little half-moon but nobody lives there so that doesn't count we live on the big half-moon we are father and claude and i and aunt esther and mimmy and dick it used to be only father and claude and i it is all on account of the kite that there are more of us this is what i want to tell you about father is the keeper of the big half-moon lighthouse he has always been the keeper ever since i can remember although that isn't very long i am only eleven years old claude is twelve in winter when the harbor is frozen over there isn't any need of a light on the big half-moon and we all move over to the mainland and claude and mimmy and dick and i go to school
but as soon as spring comes back we sail to our own dear island so glad that we don't know what to do with ourselves the funny part used to be that people always pitied us when the time came for us to return they said we must be so lonesome over there with no other children near us and not even a woman to look after us why claude and i were never lonesome there was always so much to do and claude is splendid at making believe he makes the very best pirate chief i ever saw dick is pretty good but he can never roar out his orders in the blood-curdling tones that claude can of course claude and i would have liked to have some one to play with us because it is hard to run pirate caves and things like that with only two but we used to quarrel a good deal with the mainland children in winter so perhaps it was just as well that there were none of them on the big half-moon claude and i never quarreled we used to argue sometimes and get excited but that was as far as it ever went when i saw claude getting too excited i gave in to him he is a boy you know and they have to be humored they are not like girls as to having a woman to look after us i thought that just too silly and so did claude
what did we need with a woman when we had father he could cook all we wanted to eat and make molasses taffy that was just like a dream he kept our clothes all mended and everything about the lighthouse was neat as wax of course i helped him lots i liked pottering round he used to hear our lessons and tell us splendid stories and saw that we always said our prayers claude and i wouldn't have done anything to make him feel bad for the world father is just lovely to be sure he didn't seem to have any relations except us this used to puzzle claude and me everybody on the mainland had relations why hadn't we was it because we lived on an island we thought it would be so jolly to have an uncle and aunt and some cousins once we asked father about it but he looked so sorrowful all of a sudden that we wished we hadn't he said it was all his fault i didn't see how that could be but i never said anything more about it to father still i did wish we had some relations it is always lovely out here on the big half-moon in summer when it is fine the harbor is blue and calm with little winds and ripples purring over it and the mainland shores look like long blue lands where fairies dwell away out over the bar where the big ships go it is always hazy and pearl tinted like the inside of the mussel shells
claude says he is going to sail out there when he grows up i would like to too but claude says i can't because i'm a girl it is dreadfully inconvenient to be a girl at times when it storms it is grand to see the great waves come crashing up against the big half-moon as if they meant to swallow it right down you can't see the little half-moon at all then it is hidden by the mist and spume we had our pirate cave away up among the rocks where we kept an old pistol with a lock broken a rusty cutlass a pair of knee-boots and claude's jute beard and wig down on the shore around one of the horns of the half-moon was the mermaid's pole where we sailed our toy boats and watched for sea kelpies we never saw any dick says there is no such thing as a kelpie but then dick has no imagination it is no argument against the thing that you've never seen it i have never seen the pyramids either but i know that there are pyramids every summer we had some hobby but last summer before dick and mimmy came we were crazy about kites a winter boy on the mainland showed claude how to make them and when we went back to the big half moon we made kites galore even pirating wasn't such good fun claude would go around to the other side of the big half moon and we would play shipwrecked mariners signaling to each other with kites oh it was very exciting
we had one kite that was a dandy it was as big as we could make it and covered with lovely red paper we had pasted gold tinsel stars all over it and written our names out in full on it claude martin leet and philip of brewster leet big half-moon lighthouse that kite had the most magnificent tail too it used to scare the galls nearly to death when we sent up our kites they didn't know what to make of them and the big half-moon is such a place for galls there are hundreds of them here one day there was a grand wind for kite flying and claude and i were having a splendid time we used our smaller kites for signaling and when we got tired of that claude sent me to the house for the big one i'm sure i don't know how it happened but when i was coming back over the rocks i tripped and fell and my elbow went clear through that lovely kite you would never have believed that one small elbow could make such a big hole claude said it was just like a girl to fall and stick her elbow through a kite but i don't see why it should be any more like a girl than a boy do you we had to hurry to fix the kite if we wanted to send it up before the wind fell so we rushed into the lighthouse to get some paper
we knew there was no more red paper and the looks of the kite were spoiled anyhow so we just took the first thing that came handy an old leather that was lying on the bookcase in the sitting-room i suppose we shouldn't have taken it although as matters turned out it was the best thing we could have done but father was away to the mainland to buy things and we never thought it could make any difference about an old yellow leather it was one father had taken from a drawer in the bookcase which he had cleaned out the night before we patched the kite up with a letter a sheet on each side and dried it by the fire then we started out and up went the kite like a bird the wind was glorious and it soared and strained like something alive all at once snap and there was claude standing with a bit of cordon in his hand looking as foolish as a flat fish and our kite sailing along at a fearful rate of speed over to the mainland i might have said to claude still like a boy but i didn't instead i sympathized with him and pointed out that it really didn't matter because i had spoiled it by jabbing my elbow through it
by this time the kite was out of sight and we never expected to see or hear of it again a month later a letter came to the big half moon for father jake wiggins brought it over in his sloop father went off by himself to read it in such a queer-looking face as he had when he came back his eyes looked as if he had been crying but that couldn't be i suppose because claude says men never cry anyhow his face was all glad and soft and smiley do you two young pirates and freebooters want to know what has become of your kite he said then he sat down beside us on the rocks at the mermaid's pool and told us the whole story and read his letter to us it was the most amazing thing it seems father had had relations after all a brother and a sister in particular but when he was a young man he quarreled with his brother who didn't treat him very well but he's been dead for years so i won't say a word against him and i gone away from home he never went back and he never even let them know he was living father says that this was very wrong of him and i suppose it was since he says so but i don't see how father could do anything wrong anyway he had a sister esther whom he loved very much but he felt bitter against her too because he thought she took his brother's part too much so though a letter of hers asking him to go back did reach him he never answered it and he never heard anything more
years afterward he felt sorry and went back but his brother was dead and his sister had gone away and he couldn't find out a single thing about her so much for that and now about the kite the letter father had just received was from his sister our aunt esther and the mother of dick and mimmy she was living at a place hundreds of miles inland her husband was dead and as we found out later although she did not say a word about it in the leather she was very poor one day when dick and mimi were out in the woods looking for botany specimens they saw something funny on the top of a tree dick climbed up and got it it was a big red kite with a patch on each side and names written on it they carried it home to their mother dick has since told us that she turned as pale as the dead when she saw our names on it you see philippa was her mother's name and claude was her father's and when she read the letter that was pasted over the hole in the kite she knew who we must be for it was the very letter she had written to her brother so long ago so she sat right down and wrote again and this was the leather jake biggins brought to the big half moon it was a beautiful leather i loved aunt esther before i even saw her just from that leather next day father got jake to take his place for a few days and he left claude and me over on the mainland while he went to see aunt esther
when he came back he brought aunt esther and dick and mimmy with him and they have been here ever since you don't know how splendid it is aunt esther is such a dear and dick and mimmy are too jolly for words they love the big half moon as well as claude and i do and dick makes a perfectly elegant shipwrecked mariner but the best of it all is that we have relations now and of our runaway kite recording by maria theresa
