Volume II Part 7 (2/2)

”Why in the world don't you marry and have a home of your own,” sighed Mrs. Davids.

”Well, I don't _expect_ to marry. I don't know as I do at my time of life,” responded the spinster. ”I rather guess my day for chances is gone by.”

”You ain't such a dreadful sight older than I am, though,” replied Mrs.

Davids, reflectively.

”Not so old by two full years,” returned Miss Tame, taking another smart pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did it good. ”But _you_ ain't looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose.”

Mrs. Davids sighed, evasively. ”We can't tell what is before us. There is more than one man in want of a wife.”

As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the beach, his head a long way forward and his shambling feet trying in vain to keep up.

”Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried,” continued Mrs.

Davids, accepting this application to her words, ”and there is Captain Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and _no_ housekeeper at all. It would be an excellent home for you, Persis.

Captain Ben always had the name of making a kind husband.”

She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved man, or for the mult.i.tude of women bereft of such a husband.

By this time Captain Ben's head was at the door.

”Morning!” said he, while his feet were coming up. ”Quite an accident down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ash.o.r.e in the blow and broke all up into kindling-wood in less than no time. Captain Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight.”

”I knowed it,” sighed Mrs. Davids. ”I heard a rus.h.i.+ng sound sometime about the break of day that waked me out of a sound sleep, and I knowed then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time.”

”Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night,” said Captain Ben; ”for as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet blankets asleep behind the life-boat house. He said he felt like he could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure enough.”

”Oh, then it couldn't have been them, I was warned of!” returned Mrs.

Davids, looking as though she regretted it. ”It was right over my head, and I waked up just as the thing was rus.h.i.+ng past. You haven't heard, have you,” she continued, ”whether or no there was any other damage done by the gale?”

”I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly,” returned Captain Ben; ”but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our coast blows, and off she trapsed.”

Mrs. Davids sighed like November. ”So you have some hard luck as well as myself. I don't suppose you can _get_ a housekeeper to keep her long,”

said she, dismally.

”Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack,” replied Captain Ben, smiling grimly.

Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down her ap.r.o.n; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and turned her eyes modestly out of the window.

”I am _so_. But the difficulty is, who will it be? There are so many to select from it is fairly bothersome,” continued Captain Ben, winking fast and looking as though he was made of dry corncobs and hay.

Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly. ”The land alive!” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. ”It makes me mad as a March hare to hear men go on as though all they'd got to do was to throw down their handkerchers to a woman, and, no matter who, she'd spring and run to pick it up. It is always 'Who will I marry?' and not 'Who will marry me?'”

”Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers here at the P'int. That was what was in my mind,” said Captain Ben, in a tone of meek apology. ”There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah Muchmore. I don't know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think every thing of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper.”

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