Out to the north the sea was shimmering and sparkling gaily , with little foam crests here and there ruffled up by the cool morning breeze . Oh , it would be a splendid day ! And he , Ted Melvin , was to have a half holiday for the first time since he had come to live in Brookdale four years ago -- a whole afternoon off to go to the Sunday School picnic at the beach beyond the big hotel . It almost seemed too good to be true ! The Jacksons , with whom he had lived ever since his mother had died , did not think holidays were necessities for boys . Hard work and cast-off clothes , and three grudgingly allowed months of school in the winter , made up Ted 's life year in and year out -- his outer life at least . He had an inner life of dreams , but nobody knew or suspected anything about that . To everybody in Brookdale he was simply Ted Melvin , a shy , odd-looking little fellow with big dreamy black eyes and a head of thick tangled curls which could never be made to look tidy and always annoyed Mrs. Jackson exceedingly . It was as yet too early to light the fire or go for the cows . Ted crept softly to a corner in the garret and took from the wall an old brown fiddle . It had been his father 's . He loved to play on it , and his few rare spare moments were always spent in the garret corner or the hayloft , with his precious fiddle . It was his one link with the old life he had lived in a little cottage far away , with a mother who had loved him and a merry young father who had made wonderful music on the old brown violin . Ted pushed open his garret window and , seating himself on the sill , began to play , with his eyes fixed on the glowing eastern sky . He played very softly , since Mrs. Jackson had a pronounced dislike to being wakened by `` fiddling at all unearthly hours . '' The music he made was beautiful and would have astonished anybody who knew enough to know how wonderful it really was . But there was nobody to hear this little neglected urchin of all work , and he fiddled away happily , the music floating out of the garret window , over the treetops and the dew-wet clover fields , until it mingled with the winds and was lost in the silver skies of the morning . Ted worked doubly hard all that forenoon , since there was a double share of work to do if , as Mrs. Jackson said , he was to be gadding to picnics in the afternoon . But he did it all cheerily and whistled for joy as he worked . After dinner Mrs. Ross came in .
Mrs. Ross lived down on the shore road and made a living XXXXX herself and her two children by washing and doing days ' work out .
about but for from in of on since to with