第20章

Dorinda smiled, grimly.

"If it's the right kind of a fence, maybe 'tis," she observed.

"Otherwise the pickets are liable to make you uncomf'table after a spell, I presume likely."I went out soon after this, for my evening smoke and walk by the bluff.As I left the dining-room I heard Lute reiterating his belief that I had gone crazy.Colton had said the same thing.Iwondered what Captain Jed's opinion would be.

Whether it was another phase of my insanity or not, I don't know, but I woke the next morning in pretty good spirits.Remembrance of the previous day's humiliations troubled me surprisingly little.

They did not seem nearly so great in the retrospect.What difference did it make to me what that crowd of snobs did or said or thought?

However, there was just enough bitterness in my morning's review of yesterday's happenings to make me a little more careful in my dress.I did not expect to meet my aristocratic neighbors--Idevoutly wished it might be my good luck never to meet any of them again--but in making selections from my limited wardrobe I chose with more thought than usual.Dorinda noticed the result when Icame down to breakfast.

"Got your other suit on, ain't you," she observed.

"Yes," said I.

"Goin' anywheres special?"

"No.Down to the boathouse, that's all.""Humph! I don't see what you put those blue pants on for.They're awful things to show water spots.Did you leave your brown ones upstairs? Um-hm.Well, I'll get at 'em some time to-day.Inoticed they was wearin' a little, sort of, on the bottoms of the legs."I had noticed it, too, and this reminder confirmed my suspicions that others had made the same observations.

"I'll try and mend 'em this afternoon," went on Dorinda, "if I can find time.But, for mercy's sake, don't spot those all up, for Imay not get time, and then you'd have to wear your Sunday ones."I promised, curtly, to be careful, and, after saying good morning to Mother, I went down to the boathouse and set to work on the engine.It was the only thing in the nature of work that I had to do, but, somehow or other, I did not feel like doing it any more than I had the day before.A little of my good spirits were wearing off, like the legs of my "other" trousers, and after an hour of intermittent tinkering I threw down the wrench and decided to go for a row.The sun was shining brightly, but the breeze was fresh, and, as my skiff was low in the gunwale and there was likely to be some water flying, I put on an old oilskin "slicker" and sou-wester before starting.

I had determined to row across the bay over to the lighthouse, and ask Ben Small, the keeper, if there were any signs of fish alongshore.The pull was a long one, but I enjoyed every stroke of it.The tide was almost full, just beginning to ebb, so there was scarcely any current and I could make a straight cut across, instead of following the tortuous channel.My skiff was a flat bottomed affair, drawing very little, but in Denboro bay, at low tide, even a flat-bottomed skiff has to beware of sand and eel-grass.

Small was busy whitewashing, but he was glad to see me.If you keep a lighthouse, the average lighthouse, you are glad to see anybody.He put his brush into the pail and insisted on my coming to the house, because "the old woman," his wife, would want to hear "all the sewin' circle news." "It's the biggest hardship of her life," said Ben, "that she has to miss sewin' circle when the bay ices in.Soon's it clears she's at me to row her acrost to the meetin's.I've took her to two this spring, but she missed the last one, on account of this whitewashin', and she's crazy to know who's been talked about now.If anything disgraceful has happened for the land sakes tell her; then she'll he more reconciled."I had nothing disgraceful to tell, but Mrs.Small was glad to see me, nevertheless.She brought out doughnuts and beach-plum jelly and insisted on my sampling both, the doughnuts because they were just made and she "mistrusted" there was too much flour in them, and the jelly because it was some she had left over and she wanted to see if I thought it was "keepin'" all right.After this, Ben took me out to see his hens, and then we walked to the back of the beach and talked fish.The forenoon was almost gone when I got back to the skiff.The tide had ebbed so far that the lightkeeper and I had to pull the little boat twenty feet to launch her.

"There!" said Ben, "now you're afloat, ain't you.Cal'late you'll have to go way 'round Robin Hood's barn to keep off the flats.Iforgot about the tide or I wouldn't have talked so much.Hello!

there's another craft about your size off yonder.Somebody else out rowin'.Two somebodys.My eyes ain't as good for pickin' em out as they used to be, but one of 'em IS a female, ain't it?"I looked over my shoulder, as I sat in the skiff and saw, out in the middle of the bay, another rowboat with two people in it.

"That ain't a dory or a skiff," shouted Ben, raising his voice as Ipulled away from him."Way she sets out of water I'd call her a lap-streak dingy.If that feller's takin' his girl out rowin'

he'll have to work his passage home against this tide...Well, so long, Ros.Come again."I nodded a goodby, and settled down for my long row, a good deal longer this time on account of the ebb.There was water enough on this side of the bay, but on the village side the channel made a wide detour and I should be obliged to follow it for nearly a mile up the bay, before turning in behind the long sand bar which made out from the point beyond my boathouse.

The breeze had gone down, which made rowing easier, but the pull of the tide more than offset this advantage.However, I had mastered that tide many times before and, except that the delay might make me late for dinner, the prospect did not trouble me.I swung into the channel and set the skiff's bow against the current.Then from the beach I had just left I heard a faint hail.Turning my head, Isaw Ben Small waving his arms.He was shouting something, too, but I was too far away to catch the words.