mother tend the garden and catches fish for them in the surrounding waters. Although initially reluctant to meet new people, and clearly intimidated by his sister's large personality, William comes to appreciate the narrator and shows her all around Green Island. By the end of the visit, the narrator feels deeply welcomed by the Bracketts. In July, Mrs. Todd anxiously prepares for a visit of unknown length from her old friend, Mrs. Fosdick, and the narrator worries that Mrs. Fosdick's arrival and stay in the house will disrupt the daily regularity she's become accustomed to, and alienate her from Mrs. Todd. But it turns out that all three women get along quite well, and spend evenings talking of friends and acquaintances in town, present and past. One of these tales centers on "poor Joanna," a girl they grew up with who, when left by her beau for another woman who lived further up the bay, retreats in sadness and penance to Shell-heap Island, a small deserted spot owned by her deceased father. Joanna ends up living the rest of her life on the island, fixing up the small cottage her father had built there, keeping chickens, tending a small garden, and harvesting clams on the shore. The Dunnet community doesn't know what to make of this, with some writing her off and others distressed and trying to convince her to come back to town. Eventually her way of life is accepted, as if she were an anchorite living in hermitage, and some of the townspeople pass by the island and throw things like warm clothes, tools, and extra foodstuffs up onto the shore, but without disturbing her. Later in the book, the narrator impulsively asks Captain Bowden, who is escorting her in his boat near Shell-heap, to steer closer so she can go ashore. The narrator finds that only the stone foundation of the cottage still exists, yet there is a worn path through the field, which leads to Joanna's gravestone. After Mrs. Fosdick has left, the narrator accompanies Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Blackett on a day-long trip to the Bowden family reunion, a grand event in the lives of people in Dunnet and the surrounding countryside, as most of them are related to the large Bowden clan by blood or marriage. The trip and reunion are the high point of the narrator's summer, and where she is fully accepted