"Miss Ida Nicholet is a fine looking woman now. She was a pretty sight for anybody"s eyes when she was your age, or thereabout."
"I know she was quite a belle when she was young," Lorna agreed, rather carelessly.
"And Henry Endicott wasn"t any-what did you call him jest now?"
"A misogynist-a hater of women."
"He didn"t hate "em none when he come here that first summer," said Miss Heppy, with a reflective smile. "He was a young professor at some college then. I expect he didn"t know as much about inventing things then as what he does now. But he knowed more how to please women. He pleased your Aunt Ida right well, I cal"late."
"Never! You don"t mean it, Miss Heppy!" exclaimed Lorna, sensing a romance.
"Yes, I thought then Miss Ida and Henry Endicott would make a match of it. But somehow-well, such things don"t always go the way you expect them to. Both your aunt and Professor Endicott were high-strung-same"s you and Ralph be, Lorny."
"Why," cried the girl smiling again, "I"d never fight with Ralph at all if they didn"t try to make us marry. I wonder if it is so, that Aunt Ida and Ralph"s uncle were once fond of each other! If they could not make a match of it, why are they so determined to force Ralph and me into a marriage?"
"Mebbe because they see their mistake," Miss Heppy said judiciously. "I don"t believe your aunt and Henry Endicott have been any too happy endurin" these past twenty-odd years."
"Tell me!" urged the girl, her cheeks aglow and her eyes dancing. "Is remaining single all your life such a _great_ cross, Miss Heppy? Are there not some compensations?"
The woman looked up from darning the big blue wool sock that could have fitted none but her brother"s foot. The smile with which she favored the girl had much tenderness as well as retrospection in it.
"I don"t believe that any woman over thirty is ever single from choice, Lorny. She may never find the man she wants to marry. Or something separates her from the one she is sure-"nough fitted to mate with. So, she must make the best of it."
"But _you_, Miss Heppy?" asked Lorna, boldly. "Why didn"t you ever marry?"
"Why-I _was_ cal"lating on doing so, when I was a gal," said the woman gently. "Listen!"
The girl, startled, looked all about the room and then back into Miss Heppy"s softly smiling face.
"Do you hear it, Lorny? The sea a-roaring over the reef and the wind wailing about the light? That"s my answer to your question. I seen so many women in my young days left lone and lorn because of that sea. Ah, my deary, "tain"t the men that go down to the sea in ships that suffer most. "Tis their wives and mothers, and the little children they leave behind.
"When I was a young gal I never had a chance to meet ary men but them that airned their bread on the deep waters. My father was drowned off Hatteras, two brothers older than Tobias were of the crew of the windjammer, _Seahawk_. She never got around the Horn on her last v"y"ge. In seventeen homes about Clinkerport and Twin Rocks, the women mourned their dead on the _Seahawk_.
"No, no. I didn"t stay single from choice. But I shut my ears and eyes to ary man that heard the call of the sea. And I never met no other, Lorny."
The uproar of the storm was an accompaniment to Miss Heppy"s story. The solemnity of it quenched any further expression of what Lorna Nicholet considered her troubles. Within the kitchen there was silence for a s.p.a.ce.
CHAPTER III
THE APEX OF THE STORM
Bedtime came, and Miss Heppy led Lorna, with the little whale oil hand lamp, up one flight of the spiral stairway and ushered her into the best bedroom. It was the whitewashed cell facing the ocean.
The waves boomed with sullen roar upon the rocks, breaking, it seemed, almost at the base of the lighthouse. Spray, as well as the sleet, dashed against the single unshuttered window. It was sheeted with white. But Miss Heppy drew the curtains close.
"You won"t be afraid to sleep here alone, will you, child?" asked the lightkeeper"s sister. "Tobias and I are only just across the landing.
Though I guess Tobias will be up most o" the night watchin" the lamp, and he"ll likely put your young man in his bed."
"I wish you wouldn"t!" sighed Lorna. "He"s not my young man, whatever else he may be. I here and now disown all part and parcel in Ralph Endicott."
"I dunno what Miss Ida will say," the woman observed mournfully. "It"ll be a shock to her. Wal, try to sleep, deary, if the wintry winds do blow. I guess "twill clear, come morning. These late winter storms never last."
She had shaken out a voluminous canton-flannel nightgown which she laid over the foot of the bed. Now she p.r.i.c.ked up the two round wicks of the lamp with a pin, and after kissing the visitor left her to seek repose.
She heard a heavy step on the stair as she reached the foot of it, so held the kitchen door open for her brother. Tobias had left Ralph to watch the lamp while he came down on some small errand. Finding his sister alone, the lightkeeper lingered.
"I give it as my opinion, Heppy," he said, slowly puffing on his clay pipe, "that it was lucky we was born handsome instead o" rich."
"You speak for yourself, Tobias," rejoined his sister, with good-natured irony. "My beauty never struck in, so"s to be chronic, as ye might say.
And I could do right now with lots more money than we"ve got."
"You"d only put it in the Clinkerport Bank-you know you would," chuckled Tobias. "And the most useless dollar in the world-to the owner I mean-is a dollar in the bank."
"You never did properly appreciate money."
"No, thanks be! Not according to your standard of appreciation, Heppy.
Money is only good for what you spend it for. A dollar in the bank that airns ye three cents a year ain"t even worth thinkin" of-let alone talking about. You might just as well hide it under the hearthstone.
It would be less worry."
"We ain"t got enough in the Clinkerport Bank to worry you none," scoffed his sister.
"I dunno. Arad Thompson, the president of the bank _might_ run off with the funds. Such things do happen."
"And he confined to a wheel chair for ten years now!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Heppy. "I shall never worry over our little tad of money-save that it is so little."
"I give it as my opinion that money don"t seem to do folks all the good in the world that it oughter. Look at these two young ones, now, Lorna and Ralph. Their folks has got more wealth than enough. And yet Ralph croaks as though he saw no chance at all ahead of him but trouble."
"I do allow," admitted Miss Heppy, "that Lorna thinks as little of Ralph"s money as she seems to of the boy himself. And he"s a nice boy."
"And she"s just the nicest gal that ever stepped in shoe-leather,"
rejoined the lightkeeper stoutly.
"They don"t "preciate each other," sighed Miss Heppy.
"Ain"t it so? I give it as my opinion that if they was poor-re"l poor-they would fall in love with each other quick enough."
"I dunno--"
"_I do,_" declared the confident lightkeeper. "It"s a case o" money being no good at all to them young ones. If Ralph had to dig clams or clerk it in a bank for a living, and Lorny didn"t have more"n two caliker dresses a year and could not get any more-why! them two would fall in love with each other so hard "twould hurt. That"s my opinion, Heppy, and I give it for what it"s worth."
He knocked the heeltap out of his pipe on the stove hearth. His sister was not giving him her full attention. She raised her eyes from her darning and listened to the storm.
The wind shrieked like a company of fiends around the tall tower. The sleet and spray slapped viciously against the shutterless windows on the exposed side of the structure. The woman shook her head.
"It"s a terrible night, Tobias. Listen!"