It was not so much that the people were unfriendly as that they were self-satisfied; not so much uncharitable as parochial. They were quietly proud of their wealth and their heritage as whaling men, mariners, jack tars and fisher­men (if not pirates and buccaneers), and they preferred to keep their island free of the vacationists who flooded Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

The Yarkie-ites continued to be “. . . of sober peace­able conversation.” The redoubtable Johnson clan had produced one firebrand, a daughter named Jessica, now married to a Harvard biology professor, Richard Carr. But their daughter, Elizabeth Carr, visiting her grandfather, Elias, was more like the conservative old man than her activist mother. Captain Elias Johnson’s view, expressed with some force, was that women, modern or old-­fashioned, had enough to do making a home and raising children.

This summer, Elizabeth was clearly a child no longer. At twenty, she was to start her senior year at Radcliffe in the fall, and not even her deep love for Yarkie and her grandfather would keep her returning to the island many more years. On this visit she had displayed some of her mother’s independence by bringing a black classmate as her companion. The islanders were standoffish at first, but the young woman was warm, honest, and dusky beautiful. She won over the people, and they won her over. Elizabeth was delighted. She had feared a fuss, at just the time she herself wanted the island’s quiet perspective “to get her own act together.” She had barely passed her junior-year classes, and was restless without any clear idea of a career ahead. There seemed an embarrassment of choices and a poverty of inner conviction.

For her friend’s part, Bonnie Taylor was in love with Yarkie at first sight. She had expected to find the island as charming as Elizabeth had promised, but nothing had prepared her for the eighteenth century world she entered when she stepped off the small ferry. It was hard to believe that many homes used only kerosene lamps and candles for lighting, and wood and coal stoves for cooking. It was both enchanting and refreshing. She was amazed to find how quickly one learned to rise at dawn, wash with gasps of incredibility in cold water, warm one’s hands (and rear end) thankfully at the kitchen stove, and feel a steaming breakfast mug of coffee washing down to heat the stomach and the cockles of one’s heart.

She was half sorry to learn that these experiences had only been due to a temporary problem with Captain Johnson’s generator, which otherwise supplied modern lights, heat, and hot water.