"You, Veronica," said Miss Burridge one morning, looking out of the kitchen window. "I feel sorry for that young boy."
"I told you you would. Old Nick should worry what his nephew does with himself all day."
"Veronica!" Miss Priscilla gave the girl a warning wink and motioned with her hand toward the sink where Genevieve, her hair in a tight braid and her slender figure attired in a scanty calico frock, was looking over the bib of an apron much too large for her, and washing the breakfast dishes.
"Excuse me," said Veronica demurely. "I meant to say Mr. Gayne. Genevieve, you must never call Mr. Gayne 'Old Nick.' Do you hear?"
"Veronica!" pleaded Miss Burridge.
"Oh, we all know Mr. Gayne," said Genevieve, in her piercing, high voice which always seemed designed to be heard through the tumult of a storm at sea.
"He has been here before, then?" asked Miss Burridge.
"Pretty near all last summer. He comes to paint, you know."
"No, I didn't know he was an artist."
"Oh, yes, he paints somethin' grand, but I never saw any of his pitchers."
"Was his nephew with him last summer?"
"No, I don't believe so. I never saw anybody around with him. He spent most of his time up to the Dexter farm. He said he could paint the prettiest pitchers there. It was him seen the first ghost."
"What are you talking about, Genevieve?" asked Miss Burridge, while Veronica busied herself drying the glass and silver.
"Oh, yes," she put in. "That is the haunted farm. Mr. Barrison was telling me about it."
"Yep," said Genevieve. "Folks had said so a long time and heard awful queer noises up there, but Mr. Gayne was the first who really seen the spook."
"I'm not surprised that he had a visitor," said Veronica. "Dollars to doughnuts, it had horns and hoofs and a tail."
"That's what Uncle Zip said," remarked Genevieve. "He said 't wa'n't anything but an old stray white cow."
Veronica laughed, and her aunt met hermischievous look with an impressive shake of the head. "Mind me, now," she said, and Veronica did not pursue the subject.
The long porch across the front of the Inn made, sometimes a sunny, and sometimes a foggy, meeting-place for the members of the family. It boasted a hammock and some weather-beaten chairs, and Miss Myrna Emerson was not tardy in discovering the one of these which offered the most comfort. She was a lady of uncertain age and certain ideas. One of the latter was that it was imperative that she should be comfortable.
"I should think Miss Burridge would have some decent chairs here," she said one morning, dilating her thin nostrils with displeasure as she took possession of the most hopeful of the seats.
The remark was addressed to Diana who was perched on the piazza rail.
"Doubtless they will be added," she said, "should Miss Burridge find that her undertaking proves sufficiently remunerative."
"She charges enough, so far as that goes," declared Miss Emerson curtly, but finding the chair unexpectedly comfortable, she settled back and complained no further.
Philip was out on the grass painting on along board the words "Ye Wayside Inn." Herbert Gayne stood watching him listlessly. His uncle was stretched in the hammock. Mrs. Lowell came out upon the porch. Mr. Gayne moved reluctantly, but he did arise. Men usually did exert themselves at the advent of this tall, slender lady with the radiant smile and laughing eyes.
"Perhaps you would like the hammock, Mrs. Lowell," he said perfunctorily.
"Offer it to me some time later in the day," she responded pleasantly, and he tumbled back into the couch with obvious relief.
Mrs. Lowell approached the rail and observed Philip's labors.
"Where are you going to hang that sign?" she asked in her charming voice. "Across the front of the house, I judge."
"Oh, no," replied Philip. "We can't hope to attract the fish. I am going to hang it at the back where Bill Lindsay's flivver will feel the lure before it gets here."
"Across the back of the house," cried Miss Emerson in alarm. "I hope nowhere near my window."
"The sign will depend from iron rings," explained Diana.
"I know they'll squeak," said MissEmerson positively; "and if they do, Mr. Barrison, you'll simply have to take it down."
No one replied to this warning. So Miss Emerson dilated her nostrils again with an air of determination and leaned back in her chair.
The eyes of both Mrs. Lowell and Diana were upon the young boy whose watching face betrayed no inspiration from the fresh morning. He had an ungainly, neglected appearance from his rough hair to his worn shoes. His clothes were partially outgrown and shabby.
"Bert," called his uncle from the hammock. The boy looked up. "Come here. Don't you hear me?" The boy started toward the piazza steps with a shuffling gait.
"You're slower than molasses in January," said Mr. Gayne lazily. "Go up to my room and get my field-glasses. They're on the dresser, I think."
Without a word the boy went into the house and Diana and Mrs. Lowell exchanged a look. Each was hoping the messenger would be successful and not draw upon himself a reprimand from the dark, impatient man smoking in the hammock.
The boy returned empty-handed. "They—they weren't there," he said.
"Weren't where, stu—" Mr. Gayne encountered Mrs. Lowell's gaze as he was in the middle of his epithet. Her eyes were not laughing now, and he restrained himself. "Weren't on the dresser, do you mean?" he continued in a quieter tone. "Well, didn't you look about any?"
"Yes, sir. I looked on the—the trunk and on the—the floor."
Mr. Gayne emitted an inarticulate sound which, but for the presence of the ladies, would evidently have been articulate. "Oh, well," he groaned, rising to a sitting posture on the side of the hammock, "I suppose I shall have to galvanize my old bones and go after them myself."
His nephew's blank look did not change. He stood as if awaiting further orders, and his listless eyes met Mrs. Lowell's kindly gaze.
"It is good fun to look through field-glasses in a place like this, isn't it, Bertie?" she said.
The boy's surprise at being addressed was evident. "I—I don't know," he replied.
His uncle laughed. "That's all the answer you'll ever get out of him, Mrs. Lowell. He's the champion don't-know-er."
The boy's blank look continued the same.It was evident that his uncle's description of him was nothing new.
"I don't believe that," said Mrs. Lowell. "I think Bertie and I are going to be friends. I like boys."
The look she was giving the lad as she spoke seemed for a moment to attract his attention.
"You won't—you won't like me," he said in his usual wooden manner.
"Children and fools," laughed his uncle, rising from the hammock.
"Mr. Gayne!" exclaimed Diana, electrified out of her customary serenity.
The man's restless, dark eyes glanced quickly from the face of one woman to another, even alighting upon Miss Emerson whose countenance only gave its usual indication that the lady had just detected a very unpleasant odor.
He laughed again, good-naturedly, and as he passed his nephew gave him a careless, friendly pat on the shoulder. The unexpected touch startled the boy and made him cringe.
"Bert believes honesty is the best policy," he said. "Don't you, Bert?"
"Yes, sir," replied the boy automatically.
"Sit down here a minute, won't you, Bertie?" asked Mrs. Lowell, making a placebeside her on the piazza rail. The boy obeyed. "Have you ever seen this great ocean before?"
"No. Yes. I don't know."
"Why, yes, you do know, of course," said Mrs. Lowell, with a soft little laugh, very intimate and pleasant. "You know whether you have seen the ocean before."
The boy regarded her, and in the surprise of being really challenged to think, he meditated.
"No," he said, at last. "I've never been here before."
"Isn't it a beautiful place?" asked Mrs. Lowell.
"I don't know," returned the boy after a hesitation. Then he looked down on the grass at Philip.
"Do you want to go back and watch Mr. Barrison paint?"
"Yes."
"All right. Run along. We'll talk some other time."
The boy rose and shuffled across the porch and down the steps.
"Mrs. Lowell, it is heart-breaking!" exclaimed Diana softly.
Her companion nodded.
"The situation is incomprehensible," said Diana. "It seems as if Mr. Gayne had some ulterior design which impelled him to stultify any outcropping of intelligence in his nephew. Have you not observed it from the moment of their arrival?"
"Yes, and before we arrived. I noticed them on the train."
"If there's anything I can't bear to have around, it's an idiot," said Miss Emerson. "It gives me the creeps. If he hangs about much, I shall complain to Miss Burridge."
The sweep of the ocean and the rush of the wind made her remark inaudible beyond the piazza. Mrs. Lowell turned to her.
"I think we all have a mission right there, perhaps, Miss Emerson. The boy is not an idiot. I have observed him closely enough to be convinced of that. He is a plant in a dark cellar, and I wonder how many years he has been there. His uncle's methods turn him into an automaton. If you keep your arm in a sling a few weeks you know it loses its power to act. The boy's brain seems to have been treated the same way. His uncle's every word holds the law over him that he cannot think, or reason, and that he is the stupidest creature living."
"That is true," said Diana. "That is just what he does."
Miss Emerson sniffed. "Well, I didn't come up to Maine on a mission. I came to rest, and I don't propose to have that gawk prowling around where I am."
Nicholas Gayne appeared, his binoculars in his hand. "Would you ladies like to look at the shipping?" he said, approaching. His manner was ingratiating, and Diana conquered the resentment filling her heart sufficiently to accept the glasses from his hand. He was conscious that he had not made a good impression. "The mackerel boats are going out to sea after yesterday's storm," he remarked. "You will see how wonderfully near you can bring them."
Diana adjusted the glass and exclaimed over its power. Miss Emerson jumped up from her chair.
"That's something I want to see," she said, and Diana handed her the glass while Nicholas Gayne scowled at the spinster's brown "transformation." He was not desirous of propitiating Miss Emerson, who, however, pressed him into the service of helping her adjust the screws to suit her eyes, and was effusive in her appreciation of the effect.
"You surely are a benefactor, Mr. Gayne," she said at last, with enthusiasm.
"Let me be a benefactor to Mrs. Lowell, too," he returned, and the lady yielded up the glass.
"That is the great Penguin Light beyond Crag Island," he said, as Mrs. Lowell accepted the binoculars. "The trees hide it in the daytime, it is so distant, but at night you will see it flash out."
"It is so interesting that you are familiar here, Mr. Gayne," said Miss Emerson. "You must tell us all about the island and show us the prettiest places."
The owner of the binoculars stirred restlessly under the appealing smile the lady was bestowing upon him.
"For myself, I just love to walk," she added suggestively.
"I don't do much walking," he returned shortly. "I come here to sketch."
"Oh, an artist!" exclaimed Miss Emerson, clasping her hands in the extremity of her delight. "Do you allow any one to watch you work? Such a pleasure as it would be."
"It isn't, though," said Nicholas Gayne with an uncomfortable side-glance at his admirer. "My daubs aren't worth watching."
"Oh, that will do for you to say," she returned archly. "I have done some sketching myself. Perhaps I could persuade you to take a pupil."
"Nothing doing," returned the artist hastily. "We all come up here to rest, don't we?" he added.
"Oh, I suppose so," sighed Miss Emerson. "But I do hope you will give me the great pleasure of seeing your work sometime." She sank back into her chair with a sigh.
"That is a very fine glass," remarked Mrs. Lowell as she returned it to its owner. His brow cleared as he received it.
"Well, I must be off," he said. "I mustn't waste time under these favoring skies."
"Oh, Miss Wilbur," said Miss Emerson, addressing the young girl. "Wouldn't it be lovely if Mr. Gayne would let us go with him and watch him sketch?"
"I am quite ignorant of his art," returned Diana, rising from her seat. "And I still have a great deal of exploring to do on my own account."
Nicholas Gayne cast an admiring glance at the statuesque lines of her face and figure.
"Perhaps you will let me make a sketch of you one of these days, Miss Wilbur." Heapproached the piazza rail as he spoke and his voice carried down to where Philip was painting under the eyes of the silent, watching boy.
Philip looked up, and, catching the expression with which Gayne seemed to be appraising the young girl, he ruined one of then's in Inn so that it had to be painted out and done over.
Veronica, her duties finished for the time being, sallied out of doors and approaching Philip looked curiously at his work.
"There's nothing the matter with that," she said encouragingly, and the others came down from the piazza to praise the painter. Miss Emerson followed, but she looked at the sign doubtfully.
"One can't help being sensitive, can one?" she said to Gayne. "And the wind blows so hard all the time up here, I'm afraid that sign is going to squeak."
"Show me your window," said Philip good-naturedly, "and I'll see if we can't avoid it."
So they all went around to the back of the house where Philip had his ladder waiting and the sign was finally placed to the satisfaction of everybody except Miss Emerson, who considered it on probation.
Nicholas Gayne was still conscious that he had not made a pleasing impression in his treatment of his nephew and it was no part of his programme to attract attention. He approached the boy now.
"What are you going to do with yourself, Bert?"
"I don't know," was the answer.
"Want to come with me?"
"No, sir."
"Well, that's plain enough," said Gayne, laughing and looking around on the company.
"He's a very foolish boy," said Miss Emerson, "when he has an opportunity to watch you sketch."
"Oh, Mr. Gayne!" cried Veronica. "Don't go until you tell us about the haunted farm."
"Where did you ever hear about that?" asked the artist, looking with some favor on Veronica's round and dimpled personality. "I thought you were a stranger here."
"I am, but Genevieve Wilks has just been telling me that you really saw the spook."
Gayne laughed. "When I came up here last summer, I was told about the haunted farm, and, of course, I was interested in it at once. There are some particularly good views from there. So, naturally, I became one ofthe ha'nts myself and spent a lot of time with them."
"Oh, but tell us what it looked like," persisted Veronica. "Did you really think you saw one?"
"What a subject for this time of a clear, sunny day," said Gayne, lightly. "Wait until the thunder rolls some stormy night," and, lifting his cap, he hurried away through the field, his sketch-book under his arm.
Diana looked after his receding form.
"It is odd how little like an artist Mr. Gayne looks," she said.
"You mean he should have long hair and dreamy eyes?" asked Philip.
"I think it is the eyes," replied Diana thoughtfully. "I cannot picture his looking with concentration and persistence at anything."
"Oh, I've seen him make a pretty good stab at it," said Philip dryly, thinking of the manner in which he had on several occasions seen him stare at Diana.
At this point the dull boy found his tongue.
"I wouldn't go up there," he said haltingly.
"Up where?" asked Mrs. Lowell encouragingly.
"Up to that farm. It's full of nettles that sting, and then, when it's dark, ghosts."
The group exchanged glances.
"Who told you that?" asked Philip.
"Uncle Nick."
It did not increase the general admiration of Mr. Gayne that he should take such means for securing safety from his nephew's companionship.
Mrs. Lowell took the boy's arm. "I want to go down to the water," she said. "Will you go with me?"
"Are you afraid to go alone?" he asked.
"I should like it better if you went with me."
He allowed himself to be led around the house, then on among the grassy hummocks and clump of bay and savin and countless blueberry bushes.
"Do you see what quantities of blueberries we are going to have?" asked Mrs. Lowell.
"Are we?"
"Yes. These are berry bushes. Do you like blueberries?"
"I don't know."
Mrs. Lowell laughed and shook the arm she was still holding. "You do know,Bertie," she said. "You must have eaten lots of blueberries." Her merry eyes held his dull ones as she spoke. "I don't like to hear you say you don't know, all the time."
"What difference does it make?" he returned.
"All the difference in the world. The most important thing in life is for us toknow. There are such quantities of beautiful things for us to know. This day, for instance. We can know it is beautiful, can't we?"
When they reached the stony beach, she released his arm and sat down among the pebbles. He did not look at them or at the sea; but at her. She wore a blue dress and her brown hair was ruffling in the wind.
"Do you like stones?" she asked.
"I—" he began.
She lifted her hand and laughed again into his eyes. "Careful!" she said. "Don't say you don't know."
The boy's look altered from dullness to perplexity. "But I don't—" he began slowly.
"Then find out right now," she said, lifting a hand full of the smooth pebbles while the tide seethed and hissed near them. She held out her hand to him.
"Pick out the prettiest," she said, and hebegan pulling them over with his forefinger.
"I love stones," she went on. "See how the ocean has polished them for us. Years and years of polishing has gone to these, and yet we can pick them up on a bright summer morning and have them for our own if we want them."
"There's one sort of green," said Bertie. "Green. That's like me. Uncle Nick says I'm green."
"Uncle Nick doesn't know everything," said Mrs. Lowell quietly, as she took the pebble he had chosen and, laying her handkerchief on the beach, placed the green pebble upon it. "Now, see if we can find some that you can see the light through. There is one now. See, that one is almost transparent. It is translucent. That is what translucent means. Isn't it a pretty word—and a pretty stone? Hold it up to your eye."
The boy obeyed, a slight look of interest coming into his face. Mrs. Lowell studying him realized what an attractive face his might be. It was as if the promising bud of a flower had been blighted in mid-opening.
"Let us put all the best pebbles on my handkerchief and take them home with us. Have you a father and mother, Bertie?"
"No."
"Do you remember them?"
The boy hesitated and glanced into the kind face bent toward him. Its expression gave the lonely lad a strange sensation. A lump came into his throat and moisture suddenly gathered in his eyes. He swallowed the lump.
"Uncle Nick doesn't want me—to talk about her," he stammered.
"Your mother, do you mean, Bertie?"
The tender tone was too much for the boy. He had to swallow faster and nodded. In a minute two drops ran down his cheeks. He ignored them and began throwing pebbles into the water.
The figure that he made in his outgrown trousers and faded old sweater, trying to control himself, moved his companion, and the sign of his emotion encouraged her. Perhaps he was not so stupid as he seemed.
"I think it would be nice to make a collection of stones while we are here," she said. "I'm sure Miss Burridge will let us have a glass jar. See this one."
Bertie dashed the back of his hand across his eyes and turned to look at the small pebble she offered.
"Isn't that a little beauty?"
"I—"
"Careful!" his companion smiled as she said it and pretended to frown at him in such a merry way that the hint of a smile appeared on his face.
"Uncle Nick likes to have me say I don't know. He says it's honest."
"Well, no two people could be more different than Uncle Nick and me. I want you toknow, and I want you to say so, because it's what we all have a right to. It is what God wants of us; and, Bertie, if you ever feel like talking about your mother to me, you must do so."
The boy glanced up at her, then down at the pebbles which he pulled over in silence.
"Where do you and your uncle live?"
"In Newark."
"Do you go to school there?"
"No."
"Where do you go to school?"
"Nowhere."
"Where did you learn to read and write then, Bertie?"
"In school. I went when—whenshewas here."
"Your mother?"
"Yes."
"And have you brothers and sisters?"
"No. Just Uncle Nick."
"Does he give you studies to learn?" Mrs. Lowell's catechism was given in such gentle, interested tones that the answers had come easily up to now.
Now the boy hesitated, and she began to expect the stereotyped answer which he had learned was most pleasing, and the easiest way out with his uncle.
"I—" he began, and caught her look. "Sometimes," he added. "But Uncle Nick says it isn't any use—and I don't care anyway, because—she isn't here."
Again Mrs. Lowell could see the spasm in his throat and face. It passed and left the usual dull listlessness of expression.
"Your mother was very sweet," said Mrs. Lowell quietly, and some acknowledgment lighted his eyes as he suddenly looked up at her. "I know that because she made such a deep impression on the little boy she left. How old were you, Bertie, in that happy time when she was here?"
"I—it was Christmas, and there have been—five Christmases since. I remember them on my fingers, and one hand is gone."
Mrs. Lowell met his shifting look with thesteady, kind gaze which was so fraught with sympathy that his forlorn, neglected soul turned towards its warmth like a struggling flower to the sun.
"I'll tell you what I think would be beautiful, Bertie," she said. "And it is for you to do everything you do for her, just as if she were here, or as if you were going to see her to-morrow. Did she ever talk to you about God?"
"Yes. I said prayers that Christmas—and I got a sled."
"Do you ever say prayers now?"
"No. It—it doesn't do any good if you—if you live with Uncle Nick. He—he won't let God give you—anything."
"Let me tell you something wonderful, Bertie. Nobody—not even Uncle Nick—can stand between you and God. You know the way your mother loved you? God loves you that way, too. Like a Father and Mother both. So, whenever you think of your mother's love, think of God's love, too. It is just as real. In fact, it was God, you know, who made her love you."
The boy looked up at this.
"Yes. So, whenever you think of God, remember that 'I don't know' must nevercome into your thought. Youdoknow, and youcanknow better every day."
"Uncle Nick won't like it if I know anything."
"Dear child!" burst from Mrs. Lowell at this unconscious revelation of blight. "We will have a secret from Uncle Nick. I am so glad you have told me about your dear mother, and now you are going to start doing everything in the way you think would make her happy if she were here. I am sure she loved everything beautiful. She loved flowers and birds and this splendid ocean that is going to catch us in a minute if we don't move back. What do you say to letting it catch us! Supposing we take off our shoes and stockings and wade. Doesn't that foam look tempting?"
Color rose in the speaker's cheeks as she finished, and the vitality in her voice was infectious.
"It's—it'll be cold," said the boy.
"Let it. Come on, it will be fun."
She was already taking off her shoes and he followed suit. It gave her a pang to see the holes in his faded socks, but she caught up her skirts and he pulled up his trousers and shrinkingly followed her. The June water was still reminiscent of ice, and she squealedas the foam curled around her ankles, and Bertie hopped up and down until color came into his face, too. The incoming tide, noisier and noisier, drove them farther and farther up the beach, until finally they sat down together on a rock at a safe distance from the water, and the sunlight fell hotly on their glistening feet.
"That was fun!" said Mrs. Lowell, laughing and breathing fast. "Do you know how to swim, Bertie?"
"I—no, I don't."
"That would be a nice thing to learn while you are here. You learn and then teach me."
"Me? Teach you?"
"Of course. Why not? There's a cove in the island where they all swim."
Bertie looked off on the billows. "Would my mother like that?" he asked.
"I'm sure she would, and she would like the collection of stones we are going to make, and she would like you to help Miss Burridge by weeding the garden that they have started. There are so many delightful things to do in the world, and you are going to do them all—for her."
"All for her," echoed Bertie. "And not tell Uncle Nick," he added.
"No. You and I will keep the secret."
Mrs. Lowell looked at him with a smile, and the neglected boy, his dull wits stimulated by this amazing experience of comradeship, smiled back at her, the smile of the little child who in that far-away happy Christmas had received a sled.
"Well, good-bye, Miss Priscilla," said Philip, coming into the kitchen a few mornings afterward. "This landlubber life won't do for me any longer."
Small Genevieve was at the sink washing dishes and Veronica was drying them.
Miss Burridge slid her last loaf of bread into the oven and then stood up and faced him.
"Philip Barrison," she said emphatically, "you have been a blessing for these weeks. I hate to see you go. Now, how much do I owe you for all the good things you've done for me?"
Philip laughed and, throwing his arms around her, gave her a hearty smack on the cheek.
"What do I owe you for popovers and corn fritters?" he rejoined. "Just don't let Veronica chew gum, nor let Genevieve flirt with Marley Hughes and we'll call it square."
Genevieve turned up her little nose and giggled, and Veronica looked scornful.
"Now, don't you tell me that Puppa likedit," he continued to her. "Besides, anybody that lives with your Aunt Pris has so many nicer things to chew there is no excuse. Oh, Miss Priscilla, how I hate to say adieu to the waffles!"
"Well, you must come real often, Phil. I heard you was goin' to give us a concert at the hall sometime this summer. Is that so? I do hope you will."
"I shouldn't wonder. My accompanist is coming to-day and we shall do a little work and a lot of fishing."
"Is he a young feller? You must bring him up to play croquet with the girls."
"Well, I don't know whether he has any experience as an Alpine climber or not."
"Why, I don't think it's such an awful bad ground. Do you, Veronica?"
"Not if he's real nice and hasn't any whiskers," replied the girl. "Heaven knows he'll be better than nothing. Such a place as this and not a beau! It's a crime."
"How about me?" inquired Philip modestly.
Veronica lifted her upper lip disdainfully. "Oh, you, with your lectures and your goddesses! What earthly good are you?"
"Cr-rushed!" exclaimed Philip.
"Talked to Mrs. Lowell all last evening on the piazza in that lovely moonlight. The idea of wasting it on aMrs.I suppose there's aMr.to her."
"Yes, and he's coming before the summer is over. The worst of it is she seems to like him."
"Children, children," said Miss Burridge, and she winked toward the back of Genevieve's head. Well she knew the alertness of the ears that were holding back those tight braids of hair.
"Yes, my accompanist, Barney, is a broth of a boy, but I shall tell him, Veronica, that ten o'clock is the limit, the very extreme limit."
The girl flushed and laughed. "You mind your business now, Mr. Barrison, and I'll attend to mine. I'm perfectly capable of it."
"Very well. I'll simply keep Puppa's address on my desk, and I won't use it unless I really have to," said Phil, in a conscientious tone which nearly caused Veronica to throw a cup at him.
"Go along now if you must, Philip," said Miss Priscilla. "And I do thank you, dear boy. We shall miss you every minute. Give my love to your grandmother. I wish she could get up as far as this. You tell her so."
"All right, I will. Do you know where Miss Wilbur is?"
"Aha!" said Veronica softly.
"I don't want to go without saying good-bye to her."
"I should hope not," jeered Veronica. "I suppose you won't see her again all summer."
"Oh, yes, I shall, unless Barney Kelly cuts me out."
"Sure, it's Oirish he is, thin?"
"Faith, and he is, and a bit chipped off the original blarney stone at that. Trust him not, Veronica."
"I only hope I'll get the chance, but if you're going to set him on the goddess, what sort of a look-in will I have? I've got five on my nose already."
"Five what, woman?"
"Freckles. Can't you see them from there? It will be fulsome flattery if you say you can't."
Philip squinted up his eyes and came nearer to examine.
"You remember what I said. Tell Barney they're beauty spots—'golden kisses of the sun.'"
"Oh, ain't that pretty!" shouted Genevieve. "I'm speckled with 'em jest like a turkeyegg, but I don't mind 'em the way Veronica does. I've got some powder at home and I powder over 'em."
"At your age, Genevieve!" exclaimed Philip sternly. "What shall I do with the extravagance and artificiality of this generation! Don't you know, Genevieve, that the money you spend for powder should go into the missionary box? You poor, lost, little soul!"
Genevieve giggled delightedly, and Miss Burridge, at the window, exclaimed:
"There's Miss Wilbur now, Phil, looking at the garden bed."
"If I were she," said Veronica, "I wouldn't have a word to say to you after the way you wasted last evening."
"If only she thought so, too!" groaned Philip. "But I'm not in it with her astronomy map for June. She is a hundred times more interested to know where Jupiter and Venus are than where I am—natural, I suppose—all in the family." He threw open the kitchen door and, standing on the step, threw kisses toward the group within.
"Good-bye, summer!" he sang. "Good-bye, good-bye."
The beauty of his voice had its usual effecton Diana, who stood by the strip of green, growing things, looking in his direction, her lips slightly parted over her pretty teeth.
"You see I'm good-bye-ing," he said, approaching her.
"Are you leaving us?" she returned, allowing her clasped hands to fall apart. "See how well the sweet peas are doing."
"Yes, I'm leaving you all in good shape. Do you think you can go on behaving yourselves without my watchful guardianship and Christian example?"
"I think we shall miss you. Mr. Gayne is not a fair exchange."
"Thank you. Mrs. Lowell was talking to me about that outfit last evening. She is quite stirred up about the boy."
"Yes," rejoined Diana. "I think she is a wonderful woman. She has taken him down to the beach with her again this morning. She believes that Mr. Gayne is his nephew's enemy rather than his guardian. She believes he has some reason for desiring to blight any buddings of intelligence in the boy, and uses an outrageous method of suppression over him all the time. It would be so much easier to let it go, and most of us would, I'm sure, rather than spend vacation hours in suchinsipid company, or have any dealings with that—that impossible uncle; but Mrs. Lowell will not relinquish her efforts."
"Yes, she is a brilliant, fearless sort of woman," said Philip. "I shouldn't wonder if she gave Gayne a disagreeable quarter of an hour before she gets through with him."
"One has to exercise care, however," returned Diana, "lest the man become angered and visit his ill-humor on the boy. I am often obliged to constrain myself to civility when I yearn to hurl—" she hesitated.
"Plates? Oh, do say you long to throw a plate at him!"
Diana gave her remote moonbeam smile.
"I must admit that 'invective' was in my mind. A rather strong word for girls to use."
"A splendid word. A good long one, too. You might try hurling polysyllables at him some day and see him blink."
Diana shook her head. "That sort of man is a pachyderm. He would never flinch at verbal missiles. Since you must go, I wish some other agreeable man would join our group and converse with him at table."
Philip smiled. "Surely you have noticed that Miss Emerson is not averse to assuming all responsibility?"
"Mr. Barrison," said Diana gravely, "I hope when I am—am elderly and unmarried, that I shall not seek to attract men."
"Miss Wilbur," returned Philip, with a solemnity fitting hers, and regarding the symmetry and grace of her lovely head, "don't spend any time worrying about that; for some inner voice assures me that you will never be elderly and unmarried."
"The future is on the knees of the gods," she returned serenely.
"Then I don't need to lose any sleep on account of your posing for one of Mr. Gayne's wonderful sketches?"
Diana brought the brown velvet of her eyes to bear fully upon him. It even seemed hopeful that a spark would glow in them.
"I loathe the man," she said slowly.
"Forgive me, divine one. Well, I must go now. Why won't you take me home? I should like you to meet my grandmother, and think of the pitfalls and mantraps of the island road if I risk myself alone: Bill Lindsay's Ford! Marley Hughes's bicycle! Lou Buell's gray mare taking him to mend somebody's broken pipe! Matt Blake's express wagon! Come and keep my courage up."
"You have a grandmother on this island?"
"I'll prove it if you'll come with me."
Diana smiled and moved along beside him. "It doesn't seem a real, mundane, earthly place to me yet," she said. "It must be wonderful to have a solidpied-à-terrehere. They tell me there are many summer cottages, but they are far from our Inn and I haven't realized them yet. I am hoping my parents will consent to purchasing some ground here for me."
"Where do you usually go in summer?"
"Our cottage is at Newport, but I like better Pittsfield, where we go in the autumn."
Philip looked around at her as she moved along through the field beside him. "Is your middle name Biddle?" he asked.
"No, I have no middle name."
"I thought in Philadelphia only the descendants of the Biddles had cottages at Newport and Pittsfield."
Diana smiled. "I know that is a stock bit of humor. What was that about an Englishman who said he had seen Niagara Falls and almost every other wonder of America except a Biddle? He had not yet seen one."
"When do you laugh, Miss Wilbur?" asked Philip suddenly.
"Why, whenever anything amuses me, of course."
"Yet you like the island, although it has never amused you yet. I have lived in the house with you for two weeks and I haven't heard you laugh."
Diana looked up at him and laughed softly. "How amusing!" she said.
He nodded. "It's very good-looking, very. Do that again sometime. How did you happen to run away from family this season?"
"I was tired and almost ill, and some people at home had been here and told me about it. So I came, really incontinently. I did not wait to perfect arrangements, and when I arrived in a severe rainstorm one evening, I found great kindness at the house my friends had told me of, but no clean towels. They were going to have a supply later, but meanwhile I lost my heart to the view from our Inn piazza and Miss Burridge found me there one day and took me in for better or for worse. That explains me. Now, what explains your having a grandmother here?"
"Her daughter marrying my father, I imagine. My grandfather was a sea-captain, Cap'n Steve Dorking. He had given up the sea by the time I came along."
"Here? Were you born here?"
"Yes."
"That explains the maritime tints in your eyes. Even when they laugh the sparkle is like the sun on the water. Continue, please."
"Well, my father, who came here to fish, met my mother, fell in love, married her, and took her away. He was very clever at everything except making money, it seems, so my mother came home within a year to welcome me on to the planet. My grandfather had a small farm, and I was his shadow and one of his 'hands' until I was eight years old."
"Was it a happy life?"
"It was. I remember especially the smell of Grammy's buttery, sweet-smelling cookies, and gingerbread, and apple pies with cinnamon. It smells the same way now. Do you wonder I like to come back?"
"You stimulate my appetite," said Diana.
"Oh, she'll give you some. There were many jolly things in those days to brighten the life of a country boy. The way the soft grass felt to bare feet in the spring, and in the frosty autumn mornings when we went to the yard to milk and would scare up the cows so those same bare feet could stand in the warm place where the cows had lain. Then came winter and snowdrifts—making snow hutsand coasting down the hills. Sliding and skating on the ice-filled hollows. It was all great. I'm glad I had it."
"You test my credulity, Mr. Barrison, when you speak of ice and snow in this poetic home of summer breezes."
He looked down at her. "We will have a winter house-party at Grammy's sometime and convince you."
"So at eight years of age you went out into the world?"
"Yes, at my dear mother's apron strings. My father had spent some time with us every year and at last secured a living salary and took us to town. The first thing I did in the glitter of the blinking lamp-posts was to fall in love. I prayed every night for a long time that I might marry that girl. She had long curls and I reached just to her ear. I received her wedding cards a year or so ago. I was always praying for something, but only one of my prayers has ever been answered. I was always very devout in a thunderstorm, and I prayed that I might not be struck by lightning and I never have been yet."
"When was your wonderful voice discovered?"
"Look here, Miss Wilbur, you are temptingme to a whole biography, and it isn't interesting."
"Yes, I am interested in—in your mother."
"My poor mother," said Philip, in a different tone. "When I was twelve years old my father was taken ill and soon left us. My mother had to struggle and I had to stop school and go to work. The first job I got was lathing a house. I walked seven miles into the country and put the laths on that house. I worked hard for a whole week and received twelve dollars and seventy-five cents. It was a ten-dollar gold piece, two silver dollars, fifty cents, and a quarter."
Diana lifted sympathetic eyes.
"I bought a suit of clothes and gave up the gold piece. The perfect lady clerk failed to give me credit for it and six months afterward the store sent the bill to my mother. I put up a heated argument, you may be sure, and before the matter was settled, the perfect lady clerk skipped with another woman's husband. So the powers inclined to believe me rather than her."
"Poor little boy," put in Diana. "But your music?"
"Yes. Well, our minister's wife took an interest in me and gave me lessons on theorgan. I never would practice, though. I would pick out hymns with one finger while I stood on one foot and pumped the pedal with the other. It was results I was after; but the cornet allured me, and I learned to play that well enough to join the Sunday-School orchestra.
"A cousin of my mother's came to our rescue sufficiently to let me go to school, and in all my spare time I did odd jobs, some of them pretty strenuous; but I was a strong youngster, and evidently bore a charmed life, for I challenged fate on trains, on top of buildings, and in engine rooms. But I'll spare you the harrowing details. At the spring commencement of the high school, I was invited to sing a solo. I warbled good old 'Loch Lomond' and forgot the words and was mortified almost to death, but the audience was enthusiastic, I have always believed out of pity."
"No no," breathed Diana.
"Well, at any rate, they insisted on an encore, and I was so braced up by the applause and so furious at myself that I gave them 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat."'
"Oh."
"I see you don't know it. Well, next day Imet a lady on the street who was very musical, it seemed, and she invited me to come to her house and talk over studying music. She said I had a great responsibility. Oh, you don't want to hear all this!"
"I do, I do."
"My mother passed away soon afterward, and the musical friend in need—good friend she was, and is—told me of a town a hundred miles away where there were vacancies she knew of in choir positions. She would give me a letter of introduction and she believed I could qualify for one of them. I didn't tell her the slimness of my cash after my dear mother's funeral expenses were paid, and she didn't know. So I traveled that hundred miles on a freight train. When I first boarded it, I crawled into the fire-box of a new engine that was being transported over that line. It grew very cold before we had gone far, and I crawled out and climbed over the coal tender and opened the hole where they put the water in. I climbed down into that empty place and lighted a match only to find that there were about twenty bums there ahead of me. I didn't stay there long, for I was good and plenty afraid; some of them looked desperate. I climbed out again and went along the traintill I came to a flat-car loaded with a new threshing machine. I saw a brakeman coming along with a lantern, and I knew if he saw me he'd put me off. So I climbed into the back of the threshing machine and down into its very depths, and after a while, when I had become chilled to the marrow, the train came to a halt. I crawled out and down to the ground and ran around to get warm. They were doing some switching and I saw they added two cars to the train. One had stock in one end and hay and grain in the other. They had to leave the door open to let in air for the stock, and up I climbed and hid under the straw and slept soundly the rest of the journey. Oh, I was dirty when I arrived! But my precious letter was safe in an inside pocket, and with the contents of the little bundle I had, and the expenditure of part of my small stock of money, I made myself decent and presented my letter of introduction. The organist of one of the churches tried me out. He liked my voice so much that he engaged me and was even interested enough to let me live at his house; but three dollars a Sunday was the salary and the voice lessons I engaged would be four dollars a week, so, of course, I had to go to work at once, and I got a job in abig sash and door factory where I worked like a horse ten hours a day."
"Why, Mr. Barrison," sighed Diana, "you are a hero."
Philip laughed. "I had no leisure to think about that. Times grew very slack and there began to be great danger that I would lose my job in the factory. They said they would have to lay me off unless I would whitewash an old building they had bought to store lumber. So I was given a brush and a barrel of lime-water and told to go at it. If I lost my job, I wouldn't be able to live. So I wrapped my feet in sacks to try to keep warm—it was late November—and went at it: and there were girls, Miss Wilbur, girls! And I couldn't put it over them after Tom Sawyer's fashion. Well, I had sung there just thirteen Sundays when the blow fell. The committee told me very kindly that they wanted to try another tenor. I went home from that talk with a heart heavy as lead. I could not sleep, and near midnight I began to cry. Yes, I did cry. I was twenty-one and I had voted, but I was the most broken-hearted boy in the State. I must have cried for two or three hours, pitying myself to the utmost, up three flights ofstairs in that little attic room, with the rain pouring on the roof over my head, when all at once I jumped out of bed as dry-eyed as if I'd never shed a tear and, lifting my right hand as high as possible, I made a vow. I said—So help me, God, I will become a singer if I have to walk over everybody in the attempt. I will learn to sing, and these mutts will listen to me and pay to hear me, too. Then I jumped back into bed and fell asleep instantly."
"Splendid!" said Diana. "And how did you keep the vow?"
"Well, next morning I began to figure what I must do. I knew I hadn't enough education. I remembered that three years before I had won a scholarship for twenty weeks' free tuition in a business college in Portland, and I decided that I would need fifty dollars. The same cousin who had helped me before to go to school, came across. I quit my job, paid my bills, and left for Portland, getting there at Christmas. I sang at the Christmas-tree exercises in my home church. I went to school as I planned, took care of the furnace for the rent of my room, took care of three horses, got the janitorship of a church—"
Diana looked up with a sudden smile. "Andforced up the thermometer when you overslept."
Philip burst into a hearty laugh. "Did Miss Burridge give me away? I tell you I saved that church lots of coal that winter."
"Oh, continue. I did not mean to interrupt you, for now you are coming to the climax."
"Nothing very wonderful, Miss Wilbur, but I found I had that to give that people were willing to pay for, and I began going about in country places giving recitals, mixing humorous recitations in with the groups of songs, playing my own accompaniments and sometimes having to shovel a path through the snow to the town hall before my audience could come in. I wonder if Caruso ever had to shovel snow away from the Metropolitan Opera House before his friends could get in to hear him! After that I worked my way through two years at college, studying with a good voice teacher. Then came the war. I got through with little more than a scratch and was in one of the first regiments to be sent home after the armistice was signed. The lady who first discovered my voice had influential musical friends in New York. She sent me to them, and, to make a long story a little shorter, last winter I was under anexcellent management, obtained a church position, and have sung at a good many recitals. The coming winter looks hopeful." Philip put his hand on his heart and bowed. "Thanking you for your kind attention—here we are at Grammy's."
Their path had led away from the main road across a field toward a buff-colored house set on a rise of ground like a billow in a green sea. Where the hill descended beyond, there grew a flourishing apple orchard.
"Since my grandfather's death, the little farm is overgrown," said Philip. "My grandmother gets a neighbor to cut the hay and milk her cow, and so leaves the cares of the world behind her."
A climbing rosebush nearly covered one side of the cottage, and old-fashioned perennials clung about its base. Nothing was yet in bloom; but soon the daisies in the field would lie in white drifts and the wild roses, large and of a deep pink, would soften the ledges of rock cropping out everywhere in the sweet-smelling fields.
Philip opened the door and ushered his companion into a small hallway covered with oilcloth, then into a sunny living-room, shining clean, with a floor varnished in yellow and strewn with rag rugs. An old lady, seated in one of the comfortable rocking-chairs, roseto meet them. Her face, the visitor thought, was one of the sweetest she had ever seen.
"What a pretty girl she must have been!" she reflected.
Around her neck the old lady wore a string of gold beads, and the thick gray hair growing becomingly around her low forehead was carried back and confined in a black net. The simple charm of her welcome to the young girl was the perfection of good manners and her voice was low and pleasant.
"I'm glad you've brought my boy back, Miss Wilbur, I've been missing him."
"That's right, Grammy. Give me a good character," said Philip hugging her and kissing her cheek. "I must have waffles, though. I'm spoiled."
Here a woman appeared at the door of the passageway that led to the kitchen. She was very wrinkled and care-worn in appearance, yet sprightly in her movements and manner. Many of her teeth were missing and her thin hair was strained back out of the way. She wore a large checked apron over her calico dress.
"Hello, there, Aunt Maria," said Philip. "This is Miss Wilbur, one of the guests at Miss Burridge's."
"Happy to meet you," said Aunt Maria, but casually, in the manner of one who has but slight time for trivial things like social amenities. Then she fixed Philip with a severe stare. "Is this the day you was expectin' the New York man?"
"It is, Aunt Maria. Don't tell me you weren't sure and haven't plenty on hand for two man-sized appetites."
"Well, I thought 'twas. I guess I can feed you." Aunt Maria's severity lapsed in a semi-toothless smile. "How's Priscilla Burridge gettin' along?"
"Famously," replied Philip. "She's given me waffles every morning."
"H'm!" grunted Aunt Maria. "I guess I can cook anything Priscilla Burridge can, give me the ingregiencies."
"The principal ingredient is a waffle iron. I'll send for one for you."
Diana had meanwhile been placed in a seat near her hostess, where she faced the line of cheerful red geraniums on the window-sill.
"Your first visit to the island, Miss Wilbur?" asked the old lady.
"Yes, Mrs. Dorking; but not the last, I assure you."
"You like it, then?"
"I think it is a fairy-tale place."
"Miss Wilbur has been accustomed to a summer home where the hand of man has been very busy and the foot of man has trodden out nearly all of Nature's earmarks. She finds she likes the raw material better," said Philip, leaning against the mantelpiece where odd shells and quaint China objects, half-dog, half-dragon, stood as memorials to Captain Steve Dorking's cruises. The swords of two swordfishes, elaborately carved, leaned near him.
"The island's filling up," said the old lady. "A lot of the summer people came yesterday and from now on they'll flock in."
"Are you glad to see them come?" asked Diana.
"Yes," returned Mrs. Dorking, a rising inflection in her kindly voice. "They're most of them good friends of mine."
"I should say she is glad," remarked Philip. "She sits here in state and receives them all, don't you, Grammy?"
"I don't know as there's much state about it." The old lady smiled, and leaned toward Diana. "Miss Wilbur, I guess you've found out already that Philip is the foolishest boy that ever lived. We can't afford to mind his talk, can we?"
"But his singing, Mrs. Dorking," Diana looked up at Philip's tow head towering toward the low ceiling. "It doesn't greatly matter how he talks when he can sing as he does."
"Yes," returned the old lady, again with the moderate rising inflection. "I will say Philip's got a real pretty voice."
"And there is a piano!" said Diana, wistfully looking across the room at the ancient square instrument.
"That is a very polite name for it," remarked Philip.
"Oh, Mr. Barrison, could you, won't you, sing some song of the sea?" The girl clasped her hands in prospect. "I'm your guest, you know. It is not quite possible to refuse."
"Of the sea, eh?" Philip looked at his watch. "I think we have time before the boat comes. I'll make a bargain with you. I'll sing you a song if you will go down to the boat with me and meet my accompanist."
"Oh, is your accompanist coming?"
"Even so. But when is an accompanist not an accompanist? Answer: When he comes to the sea to fish. I've lured you far from home and dinner, so you come to the boat with me and I'll send you home in Bill Lindsay's chariot."
"Very well, but—please sing!"
"Oh, yes. A song of the sea is the order, I understand. Meanwhile, I accompany myself on the harp."
Philip moved over to the piano. It was placed so he could look over the case at his listeners. He ran his fingers over the yellow keys which gave out a thin, tinkling sound, and then plunged into song: