Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes

Author:Eleanor Estes [Estes, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ages 9 and up
ISBN: 0152025596
Publisher: Odyssey/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1958-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

12. The Man on the Ferryboat

Now this one man on the boat, whose luggage Jerry happened to be lucky enough to get, turned out to be a curious one. Not curious in the way some small children are, asking a lot of questions. But curious because he turned out to be another bird man. Wasn't it a curious happenstance that not only their father, Mr. Edgar Pye, but also this new man, just arrived on the Fire Island boat, should both be men who studied birds?

Moreover, was it not curious that this one lone man on the boat who was a bird man like their father should turn out to be a bird man of whom they had heard? H. Hiram Bish (though they had never heard of the extra H. he had), a friend of their father's! The name of Hiram Bish was now a familiar one to them, and it had been only yesterday that Papa had read them the story in the newspaper that had been wound around the mackerel telling how this very man's little owl had been lost at sea, his pet pygmy owl.

How had Rachel and Jerry found out so soon that this man was another bird man and one whom they knew about? Just by looking at a person you can't tell whether he is a bird man or what. You have to find out, somehow. Well, Rachel happened to see a sticker on his valise, a sticker from the boat the SS Pennsylvania, and it had on it the name H. Hiram Bish, Department of Ornithology, University of the Great and Far West. Ornithology may be a big word to some but not to a boy and a girl who happened to have an ornithologist for a father. They knew that in simple language it meant birds, just birds. When the man wasn't looking, Rachel gave Jerry a kick and pointed to the label. He lowered the corners of his mouth, indicating, "I see, hm-m-m, ornithology, yes..." And he and Rachel exchanged a meaningful glance.

Are there enough birds on Fire Island for two bird men to study during the same summer? Rachel asked herself. Their father, in a wheelchair with a broken ankle, probably was not seeing the best of the birds. This man, with his two good feet and two good legs, would probably probe every nook and cranny of the island with his spy glasses and his optical lenses and his notebooks and get the whole thing down and send it in first to the men in Washington.

Out of loyalty to her ankle-broken father, Rachel said, "Not many birds on Fire Island. Just a tern here or there." She hoped the man would take the boat back when he heard this discouraging news.

"Ah, I see," said Mr. Bish. "But it's nice here, though."

"Ye-e-e-es," said Rachel in a tone she intended to have sound some-may-think-so, some-may-not.

Then she felt ashamed of herself. "It really is very nice," she said, "when you get used to it.

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