Part 4 (2/2)

”Nancy, I never knowed yuh to be anything but fair. S'posin' our leetle Joe was kerried out to sea, an' in a strange land met up with a citizen as took him home to his wife. What kinder reception do yuh think _he'd_ get? Could any woman look in Joe's face an' send him away from her door?

Wall, then, jest look in the face o' this boy, an' then if so be yuh say take him away, I'll do it, Nancy,” he said, simply.

Almost against her will she was compelled to look.

Well it was for Darry that he had clear eyes in which lurked no guile, for that gaze of the surfman's ”missus” was searching, since she had before her mind a picture of the lost Joe.

She only nodded her head and said:

”Let him stay.”

Perhaps she was too full of emotion to say more; but the husband nodded his head as though satisfied with what he had done.

”It's all right, boy; she seen Joey in your eyes, jest as I done. Seems to me yuh kin make good with the ole woman. Don't notice all she says fur a time. Sure she's suffered some.”

Apparently the family had waited with supper for Abner to come home, for his wife immediately placed the meat on the frying pan, and the odor of steak quickly filled every cranny of the small cabin of three rooms.

The two little girls were slow to make up with Darry, but he knew how to interest them in certain ways, and it was not long before they hovered around him as if he were a curiosity indeed.

Abner tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, for various reasons.

He saw that his wife had not yet become reconciled to the fact of a stranger coming among them, and was watching Darry out of the corners of her eyes from time to time, while a frown would gather on her brow.

She was a sharp-featured woman; but life goes hard with those of her s.e.x in this coast country, and they grow old at forty.

Darry was studying hard how to please her, for he felt that she was to be pitied after having lost her only boy so suddenly a year or so back; and he determined never to forget this if she should scold him needlessly or show temper.

He antic.i.p.ated her wants in the line of wood for the fire, cheerfully a.s.sisted in was.h.i.+ng up the supper dishes, and was withal so obliging that ere long the anxious Abner saw the lines begin to leave the forehead of his better half.

This tickled him more than any well-won fight in the breakers might have done, for he had a secret dread of Nancy's often ungovernable temper.

”The boy's gone and done it, blame me if he ain't!” he muttered to himself, when he saw his wife actually smile over at where Darry was sitting, with one of the twins on either side, entranced with some figures he was drawing to ill.u.s.trate a little story he had been telling them about some sight seen in Naples.

When it came time to retire Darry was given a shake-down in the second room.

He felt that he had made some sort of an impression upon the surfman's wife, and that after all she might not prove so hard to win as he had feared from what little he had heard about her temper.

That night was the most peaceful he had known for some time.

In the morning he was up before any one else stirred, and when Mrs Peake made her appearance she found a bright fire burning in the kitchen, plenty of wood on hand, a bucket of water from the spring handy, and a boy only too anxious to do anything he was told in the way of ch.o.r.es.

Perhaps she may have had a suspicion that it would not last.

”A new broom sweeps clean,” she remarked to Abner, as he appeared and looked at her inquiringly.

”I calkerlate this one means to keep a-going' right along,” he said, ”yuh see, the poor critter ain't never had no home before, an' he'll sorter 'preciate one now. Give him a show an' he'll make good.”

When Abner had to return to the other side of the bay Darry went with him to the store, where a supply of edibles was laid in according to the list written out by the station keeper; together with a can of oil, since their stock had run low.

When Abner shook his hand heartily at pus.h.i.+ng off, Darry felt as though another link connecting him with the past had been broken.

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