"Then she has gone to the Cape!" exclaimed Linda, with interest. "I remember when Aunt Belinda was here at Christmas Mrs. Porter talked about it with her."
"Yes," responded Mr. Barry, "and I think the plan is for Bertram to join her there if – when he can go."
"Right away, won't he?" demanded Linda eagerly. "His doctor says – "
"Yes, poor Bertram," said Mr. Barry slowly, "he does need it; but, little one," – he patted Linda's hand slowly, – "we can't either of us go quite so soon as we expected."
"Now, Father!" exclaimed the girl acutely.
"Something very important, Linda," – his voice increased as he repeated it, – "very important. I think we must – " he rose; "but it's late. We must go upstairs now, little one."
His repetition of the term of affection impressed Linda. It was associated with sadness. She remembered how often he had used it during the week that her mother died.
"I shall read you to sleep, dear. Please let me," she said as they rose.
"No, no need of that. Go to bed, little girl. I'll lock up. Good-night, daughter."
He put his arms around her, and she clung to him, kissing him again and again.
CHAPTER V
THE CAPE
Maine. Mrs. Porter loved the very word. Always when the train left the North Station in Boston she sank into her chair with a sense of shaking off the cares of life; and to-day the smile she gave the porter as he placed her suit-case beside that chair was valued, even by him, more than the coin she placed in his hand.
The cares of life in her case were represented by a busy music studio, where, luckily for her, every half-hour was a busy one; but there were the pupils who didn't supply their own steam, but had to be urged laboriously up the steeps of Parnassus; there were those in whom a voice must be manufactured if it ever appeared; and those whose talent was great and whose application was fitful; those whose vanity was fatuous, and those whose self-depreciation was a ball and chain; those who had been badly taught and who must be guided through that valley of humiliation where bad habits are overthrown. Taking into account all the trials of the profession, any voice teacher in Mrs. Porter's place to-day might give a Boston and Maine porter a seraphic smile as if he were opening to her the gate leading to Elysian Fields where pianos and vocalises have no place.
"That woman sure do look happy," was the soliloquy of this particular red-cap as he pocketed the silver and left the car.
The traveler leaned back in her chair with a glorious sense of unlimited leisure, and prepared to recognize the landmarks grown as familiar to her as the scenes on the Illinois Central suburban railroad.
Probably none of her pupils save Linda Barry, although there were other hero-worshipers among them, would deny that Mrs. Porter's nose was too short, her mouth too wide, and her eyes too small; but the kindly lips revealed such even teeth, and the eyes such light, that no one commented on Maud Porter's looks, nor cared what shape her nose was. One saw, as she leaned back now in her chair, that her brown hair was becoming softly powdered with gray. Her eyes half closed as the express train gained speed, flying away from care, and her humorous lips curved as she considered the mild adventure on which she was embarking.
When Miss Belinda Barry had visited her brother during the holidays, she had dropped some remarks concerning her home which had roused Mrs. Porter's curiosity and interest. The idea had been growing on her all the spring that, instead of going out as usual to one of the islands in Casco Bay, she would explore this corner of the mainland from whence had sprung the Chicago financier. She had not, however, communicated since with Miss Barry. She did not wish that lady to feel any responsibility for her.
A picture of Linda's aunt rose before her mind as she reflected. Tall, thin, with a scanty coiffure and long onyx earrings. These ornaments Miss Barry had donned in her youth, and declined to renounce with the fashion; so that when they began to be worn again by the daring, they gave her the effect, as Linda had confided to her teacher, of being "the sportiest old thing in town."
The naturally severe cast of Miss Barry's features, Mrs. Porter had always observed, rather increased in severity when the good lady looked at her niece, and that holiday visit had been a strain on both sides.
It was happy history repeating itself when the traveler alighted to-day at the Union Station in Portland. The same involuntary wonder rose within her that any face could look harassed, ill, or care-worn here. It was Maine. It was the enchanted land! the land of pines, of unmeasured ocean, of supernatural beauty in sunset skies; of dreamful days and dreamless nights.
She smiled at her own childish ignoring of the seamy side of existence as evidenced in the look of many of the crowd hurrying through the busy clearing-house of the station. She beamed upon a porter who took her to a waiting carriage – a sea-going hack, Linda would have called it – and drove to a hotel. She would not risk arriving in the evening in a locality where the only inn might be that of the Silver Moon.
Till supper time – it would be supper, she considered exultantly – she wandered up Congress Street to some of her favorite shops. Undeniably there are other streets in Portland, but to the summer visitor the dignified city is much like a magnified village with one main street where its life centers.
Maud Porter entered one shop after another, repressing with difficulty her longing to tell every clerk how happy she was to be back, and enjoying all over again the good manners and obligingness of everybody.
Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, she made her inquiries and took her train. It was one that stopped at every station, and when, after three quarters of an hour of this sauntering, she alighted on a desolate and unpromising platform, her first thought was to inquire in the small depot for the first train back. The little house seemed to be deserted for the moment, however, and she observed an elderly man with a short white beard, who, with trousers tucked into his boots and thumbs hooked in his armholes, stood at a little distance, regarding speculatively the lady in the gray suit and floating gray veil. Near where he was standing a carryall was waiting by the platform.
In Mrs. Porter's indecision she looked again within the weather-beaten station, then across at the motionless, weather-beaten face.
"There doesn't seem to be any one in here," she said.
"I cal'late Joe's out in the shed luggin' wood," responded the man. His pleasant tone, his drawl, the sea-blue of his eyes, caused her to move toward him as the needle to the magnet. She knew the type. All the suspended Maine exhilaration rushed back upon her. How clean he was! How rough! How adorable!
"I've come," she said, gazing up into the eyes regarding her steadily, and said no more.
"Want me to haul ye?" he asked kindly, not changing his position.
"Yes."
"Where to?"
"I don't know." The sunlight of her smile evoked a grin from him.
"Come on a chance, have ye?"
"Yes, So did you, I should think. Nobody but little me getting off here."
"No, 't ain't time for 'em really to come yet."
"Who? Summer people, do you mean?"
"Yes. Folks is beginnin' to think they like it down here; but we don't take summer boarders to the Cape, ye'll have to know that."
A prodigious wink enveloped one sea-blue eye.
"Oh, I'm so sorry." Mrs. Porter's smile vanished in her earnestness. "Wouldn't – wouldn't your wife, perhaps – "
"Haven't got none."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"I ain't. Ben glad on't always. Hain't ever repented."
"Then you mean you never were married."
"That's what I mean." The speaker nodded as if to emphasize a triumph.
"But isn't there some one in your – your village – I suppose it's a village, isn't it?"
"Shouldn't wonder if 'twas."
The visitor tasted that "'t wa-a-as" with appetite, and echoed it mentally.
"Some one who would take a boarder if – if I want to stay?" The monotonous landscape was not inviting.
"Wall, for accawmodation's sake I cal'late they would; but it's only for accawmodation's sake, ye understand." The speaker winked again. "The Cape don't take boarders."
"Oh, I see," laughed the visitor. "But you must have expected somebody. You're here."
"Usually git somebody. I haul 'em for hard cash, not for accawmodation's sake, so ye see I'm on hand."
"I should hope so. What should I have done if you hadn't been here?"
"Oh, they'se a car you could git over there a little piece." The speaker unhooked one thumb and gestured.
"I'd far rather go with you, Mr. – Mr. – "
"Holt. Jerry Holt. Most folks forgit the Mister. Shall I take yer bag?"
It was standing where Mrs. Porter had descended from the train, and Jerry unhooked his thumbs and clumped across the platform in the heavy boots in which he had gone clamming that morning.
Maud Porter, her spirits high, entered the old carryall. She suddenly decided not to mention her acquaintance with Miss Barry, but to pursue her way independently.
Deliberately her companion placed her bag in the carriage, then lifted the weight which anchored his steed to duty, and took his place on the front seat, half turning with a sociable air to include his passenger. "Git ap, Molly," he remarked, and Molly somewhat stiffly consented to move.
"You have a nice horse," remarked his passenger fatuously. She knew her own folly, but reveled in it. Pegasus himself could not have pleased her at this moment so well as Jerry Holt's bay. It proved that her remark was the open sesame to her driver's heart.
"There's wuss," he admitted. "Ye see me lift that weight jest now? It's nonsense to use it, but Molly's a female, after all, and in-gines comin' and goin' might git on her nerves; but take her in the ro'd, now, that hoss, she ain't afraid o' no nameable thing!" The sea-blue eyes met his listener with a challenge.
"Not autos even?" with open admiration.
Jerry Holt snorted. "Shoot! She looks down on 'em. Miss – Miss – "
"Oh, excuse me. I forgot you didn't know me. I'm Mrs. Porter, from Chicago."
"Chicago, eh? We've got a neighbor out there. Barry his name is. A banker. Ever hear of him?"
"Oh, yes, certainly."
"Sister lives here still. We all went to school together."
They were driving on a good road between green fields, and Mrs. Porter scented the crisp sea air.
"There's a handsome new house started over there," she said, indicating a hill which was to their left. "Who's building that?"
"Wall, now," the driver responded in his slow, mellifluous tones, "I couldn't tell ye – sudden."
Mrs. Porter leaned back in the carriage with a sigh of ineffable contentment, and thought of the corner of State and Madison streets.
In a minute more the glorious blue of the ocean came in sight, and scattered cottages, which with delightful irregularity were set down at random, some of them surrounded with trees and shrubs.
Mrs. Porter leaned forward with sparkling eyes.
"Don't take me anywhere just yet," she said. "Drive about a little. Have you time?"
"Plenty," declared her companion. "Hain't got to go to the station only once more to-day. Git ap, Molly."
"Oh, let her walk if she wants to. This is beautiful!"
The Cape ran out into the sea, bearing lighthouses, and was bordered with high, jagged rocks among which the clear waves rushed and broke in gay, powerful confusion. As they neared the water the visitor observed on the side toward the ship channel a cottage whose piazza touched the rocks. The hill upon which it stood ended abruptly at the water, and daisies waved in the interstices of the natural sea-wall.
"Who is the lucky woman who lives clinging to the rocks like that?" asked Mrs. Porter, indicating the shingled house with her slender umbrella.
"That? Oh, that's Belinda Barry's cottage. Might's well live in the lighthouse and done with it, I say; but she's got a spyglass and likes to watch the shippin'. See the New York bo't out there comin' in now? There! Hear her blow? Bet Belinda's got her eye on her this minute. Seems if Belinda set on them rocks a lot when she was a girl, and had a cottage in the air, ye might say, 'bout livin' there some day; so when her brother began to have more money'n he knew what to do with, he give Belinda that place. Nobody else wanted it, I can tell ye that. When I'm ashore I'd ruther be ashore, myself."
A man with a bucket of clams passed their slow-moving carriage, and looked curiously at Mrs. Porter.
"Hello, Cy," said Jerry Holt, jerking his head toward the other's nod.
The visitor looked after the figure in the dilapidated coat. "That man had a fine head," she said.
"H'm," ejaculated the other. "A pity there ain't more in it."
"Oh, is the poor creature – do you mean – "
"Oh, no, not so bad as that; but ye know how there are some folks no matter what they try at, they 're allers poundin' and goin' astern. Cy's that kind."
"It's a mercy there are always clams," said Mrs. Porter, and Jerry Holt's sea-blue eyes twinkled at her.
The visitor's plans for independence suddenly weakened. That cottage clinging to the rocks was undermining it more swiftly the further the carriage advanced.
"I believe, Mr. Holt, you'd better leave me at Miss Barry's," she said suddenly.
He shook his head. "Not a bit o' use," he replied. "She won't even accawmodate ye, let alone takin' a boarder. Belinda ain't stuck up. Her worst enemy can't say it changed her a mite to have a brother that eats off gold plates. She was always jest that way."
"What way?"
"Oh, high-headed ye might call it. I dunno exactly what; but Belinda allers claimed to steer; and now she lives to Portland winters in any hotel she's a mind to, she don't act a mite different from what she allers did, though lots o' folks claim she does. 'T ain't no use, though, Mis' Porter, your goin' there. I'd – I'd kind o' hate to have Belinda refuse ye."
The speaker cast a kindly glance at his passenger, who smiled back at him appreciatively.
"Thank you, but I do know Miss Barry. I met her in Chicago, and I'll just stop for a call, and she'll advise me where to go; for I tell you I'm going to stay, Mr. Holt, even if you have to let me sleep in your carryall. Why haven't you a nice wife, now, who would take me in?"
"That's jest why. 'Cause that's the specialty o' wives, and I didn't want to be took in."
Mrs. Porter laughed, and the carryall drew up beside Miss Barry's sunlit piazza. She opened her purse. "How much, Mr. Holt?"
"Well, I'll have to charge ye twenty-five cents for this outin'," he returned with deliberate cheerfulness. "One minute, till we see if Miss Barry's to home."
He got out upon the piazza and knocked on the cottage door, opening it at the same time.
"Belinda!" he called.
"Leave it on the step," came a loud voice from the back of the house.
"Hear that?" he grinned, turning. "She's home, and I'm to leave ye on the step."
"That's all right," said Mrs. Porter, alighting. Jerry Holt's clean, rough hand assisted her, and lifted out her suit-case "I'm perfectly charmed to be left on the step," she added, handing her guide a quarter, which he pocketed with a nod. "I'll try not to envy the girl who sat on these rocks and built a cottage in the air that came to earth."
"She's welcome to it, welcome to it," observed Jerry, as he climbed back into the carriage. "When I'm to sea I want to be to sea. When I'm ashore I druther be to shore."
"Did you ever go to sea?"
"Cap'n of a schooner fifteen year or more."
"Why didn't you tell me? You're Captain Holt, of course."
"Oh," he shook his head, "hain't got nothin' to steer but Molly now." He smiled, nodded a farewell, and turned his horse around with many a cluck of encouragement.
The sound of departing wheels was lost in the swish of surf on the rocks. Maud Porter stood looking seaward. Again the New York boat in the distance, lost to sight now, boomed its signal to smaller fry as it advanced to the harbor. The rioting wind carried her thin gray veil out straight. She heard the house door open, and turned to meet the surprised gaze of Miss Barry, in a checked gingham gown, but with her scanty coiffure and long onyx earrings precisely as she had seen them last.
Mrs. Porter smiled radiantly, and captured her streaming veil.
"I'm what he left on the step," she said.
Miss Barry's surprised gaze grew uncertain. There was a familiar look about this radiant face, but where —
"Was you one of the Portland Aid – " she began.
"No, no!" Mrs. Porter stepped forward and held out both her hands. "Don't let my suit-case frighten you, dear Miss Barry. I've only come to call. Remember last Christmas in Chicago, and Linda's teacher, Mrs. Porter?"
"Mrs. Porter!" exclaimed Miss Barry, letting her hand be captured in the two outstretched ones. "Do excuse me!" Her face beamed welcome. She had liked Linda's voice teacher, and when Belinda Barry liked a person it was once and forever. "Come right into the house this minute," she said cordially. "I'm ashamed o' myself!"
CHAPTER VI
THE SHINGLED COTTAGE
Miss Barry's hard, kindly hands helped remove the visitor's hat and veil, although Mrs. Porter repeated her declaration that she had come only for a call.
"You're going to stay to dinner with me," returned the hostess. "I always do have enough for two."
Her lips, which had returned to their rather grim line, twitched a little as she spoke, and Maud Porter glanced about the living-room with its old-fashioned furniture and rag rugs. Beyond was the dining-room, divided from this only by an imaginary line, and the table stood ready set for one.
"You live here all alone?" asked the visitor.
"Not half as alone as I'd like to be. I don't mind the fish and the barnacles, but it's the folks coming to the back door. Sit right down, Mrs. Porter."
"Don't let me detain you if you were getting dinner." The caller laughed. "How about these folks that come to the front door; the things Captain Holt leaves on the step?"
"Oh, I'm in no hurry. I'm going to sit right down with you now. Things are stewing out there. There's nothing to hurt."
Miss Barry suited the action to the word. Mrs. Porter regarded her with curious interest as she sank into a rocker with chintz cushions. The hostess's narrow face, usually as devoid of expression as a mask, was now lighted by pleasure.
"How comes it you didn't let a body know?" she asked.
"I was going to be so wonderfully independent! I was going to come to the Cape, and find a place to live, and then some day saunter over to your cottage bareheaded, and surprise you."
"And all you accomplished was the surprise, eh?"
"That's it, and it's entirely your fault. I was driving about with Captain Holt to see the lay of the land, when suddenly the rocks and the water, and this cottage perched on them like a gull's nest, did something to me. I don't know what. I think it gave me a brain-storm. When he told me you lived here, what could I do but rush in to congratulate you?"
Miss Barry's lips twitched again. "I ain't any gull, I will maintain that, but – it is sightly, ain't it?"
"Wonderful. Nothing less than wonderful. But in a storm, Miss Barry?"
"Yes, the windows are all spray then, and the waves try to swallow me up, and I can't hear myself think, but – "
"Yes," – Mrs. Porter nodded as the other hesitated, – "I understand that 'but.'"
"How'd you leave my brother?"
"Very tired."
"That so? Wouldn't you think he'd come up here and rock in the cradle o' the deep awhile? You write him about that hammock out there."
Mrs. Porter looked out through the open window toward the end of the porch, where a hammock hung.
"The doctor says Colorado," she replied.
"Doctor? Is it as bad as that?" Miss Barry frowned questioningly. "Lambert never writes. I don't care for his stenographer's letters, and he knows it. If he can't take time to write himself, let it go." The speaker threw her head to one side, as if disposing of the matter of fraternal affection.
"Linda is blooming," remarked Mrs. Porter.
Miss Barry's lips took a thinner line. "Let her bloom," she responded dryly; and her visitor laughed again.
"Doesn't she write either?"
"I should say not."
"It will be less difficult now she's out of college," said Mrs. Porter pacifically. "Those girls are absolutely occupied, you know."
"Never play at all, I presume," returned her hostess, with a curling lip.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that."
"Better not if you care where you go to. – No," after a slight pause, "I understand my niece a good deal better than she thinks I do. It's enough that she scorns her own name. She was named for me. Belinda's been good enough for me, and she's no business to slight the name her parents gave her."
"Oh, Linda is such a free lance," said Mrs. Porter apologetically; "and 'Linda' sounds so breezy, so – so like her. 'Belinda' is quaint and demure, and – and you know, really, she isn't demure!"
"Not a great deal," agreed Miss Barry curtly. "I'm sorry my brother isn't well," she added.
"These business men let themselves be driven so. You remember my cousin Bertram King. He and Mr. Barry have been worn down in the same vortex, and both are ordered away. I told Bertram Maine was the best place in the world for him. As soon as I find an abiding-place I shall let him know."
Miss Barry rose suddenly. "I'm forgetting that you're starved. Just excuse me while I dish up the chowder," she said, and vanished.
Mrs. Porter clasped her hands and lifted her eyes.
"Chowder!" she repeated sententiously; then she too rose, went to the open window, and stood looking out.
The tide was rising, and the waves, climbing higher and higher, threw white arms toward the shingled cottage, as if claiming its boulder foundation, and striving to pass the barrier of daisies and draw the little house down to its own seething breast.
As the visitor stood there, a woman, bareheaded, stepped up from the grass upon the porch, and giving one glance from her prominent, faded eyes at the gray figure standing in the window, crossed the piazza to the front door, which was closed.
Mrs. Porter, advancing, opened it, and came face to face with a scrawny little woman, who stood with her head apologetically on the side. Her temples were decorated with those plastered curls of hair known as "beau-catchers," and across the forehead it was strained back and caught in a comb set with large Rhinestones. Her red-and-green plaid calico dress was open girlishly at the throat, around which a red ribbon was tied with the bow in the back.
"Why are they always thin here?" thought Maud Porter. "Is it eating fish? Do they never have to reduce?"
"Oh, pardon me!" exclaimed the newcomer, with such an elegant lift of her bony shoulders that it twisted her whole body. "I expected to see Belinda – that is – pardon me! – Miss Barry."
"She's in the kitchen just at present. Won't you come in?"
The newcomer accepted with alacrity, her prominent eyes openly scanning Mrs. Porter's costume.
"I wouldn't have thought of intruding had I supposed Miss Barry had a guest. I didn't notice Jerry brought anybody." Another writhe, and a rearrangement of a long necklace of imitation coral beads, which suffered against the red plaid.
"Yes, he brought happy me," returned Mrs. Porter, wondering whether, with the chowder so imminent, she should ask this guest to be seated.
The newcomer relieved her of responsibility by sinking into the nearest chair.
"Comin' for the summer?" she asked hurriedly, as though she felt that her time was short.
"I don't know. It's a place to tempt one, isn't it?"
"The views is called wonderful," returned the other modestly. "Of course, 't ain't for us to call 'em sumtious, but artists hev called 'em sumtious."
"They deserve any praise," was the reply, and Mrs. Porter gave the speaker her sweet smile.
"It's very difficult, one might almost say comple-cated, for visitin' folks to find any place to reside on the Cape. We ain't got any hotel."
Pen fails to describe the elegant action of shoulders and eyebrows which accentuated this declaration, and Mrs. Porter's smile broadened.
"I've understood so," she replied.
"My name's Benslow," said the visitor, casting an apprehensive glance toward the dining-room. "I've got one o' these copious houses with so much more room than I can use that sometimes I hev– I hev accawmodated parties. I suppose you're from the metrolopous."
"Well, we think it is one. I'm from that wild Chicago!"
"Oh, I s'posed it was Boston."
Here Miss Barry entered, bearing a steaming tureen, which perfumed the atmosphere temptingly.
"Hello, Luella," she said quietly.
At the word the visitor started from her chair with guilty celerity, and brandished an empty cup she was carrying.
"I hadn't an idea you was entertainin', Belinda, and you must excuse my walkin' right in on – on – "
Miss Barry kept her eyes fixed imperturbably on the tureen, and turned to get a plate of crackers from a side table.
"Mrs. Porter is my name," said the guest, taking pity on Miss Benslow's embarrassed writhings.
"Oh, yes, on Mis' Porter. I just wanted to see if you could spare me a small portion of bakin' soda."
"Why didn't you come to the back door as you do commonly?"
"Why – why, the mornin' was so exhilaratin', I made sure you'd be watchin' the waves, and I thought it would expediate matters for me to come around front." An ingratiating smile revealed Miss Benslow's full set.
"Just go right out and help yourself, Luella. You know where 't is, and you can let yourself out the back door. Come, Mrs. Porter, the chowder's good and hot."
It was, indeed. Miss Benslow's prominent eyes rolled toward the white-clothed table as she passed it, and inhaled the tantalizing fragrance. She would presently go home and eat bits of cold mackerel with her old father, at the oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen. Neither he nor she was a "good provider."
Miss Barry laughed quietly to herself as she and her guest sat down.
"Luella did get ahead of me," she said appreciatively. "I don't know how she slid by. Her uniform never blends with the landscape, either. Perhaps she climbed under the lee of the rocks."
"Oh, why does she wear those beads with that frock?" asked Mrs. Porter, accepting a dish of chowder.
"I guess if we could find that out we'd know why she does lots of things," returned the hostess.
"Simply delicious," commented Mrs. Porter, after her first mouthful. "Do show me how to do it, Miss Barry."
"Surely I will; but serve it after an early start from Portland and a ride across country with the wind off the sea. That's the sauce that gives the finishing touch."
"Why are all the people in Maine thin? Is it fish? You all have the best things to eat, yet you never get cushiony like us."
Miss Barry cast a glance across at the round contours, so different from her own angles.
"I think a bit of upholstery helps, myself," she remarked.
"Now, that Miss Benslow – why, she's really – really bony."
"Yes," responded Miss Barry, eating busily, "but she's got beauty magazines that's full of directions how to reduce, and she's delighted with her bones. Unlucky for her father, because she might do more cooking if she believed flesh was fashionable. Luella's dreadfully slack," added Miss Barry, sighing; "but so's her father, for that matter. He goes out to his traps twice a day, but he wouldn't mind his chicken-house if he lost the whole brood; and just so he has plenty of tobacco the world suits him all right. You know folks can just about live on this air."
Mrs. Porter regarded her hostess thoughtfully. "Then," she said, "I don't believe their house would be a very good place to board."
Miss Barry looked up suddenly. "Board!" she repeated explosively. Then, after a silent pause, she added, "Is that what Luella came over for?"
"Probably not; but she mentioned – "
"Yes, I guess she did. She saw Jerry bring you – "
"No, she said she didn't see him bring me."
Miss Barry snorted. "Luella says lots o' things beside her prayers, and if she uses the same kind o' language for them that she does for other folks, I doubt if the Almighty can understand her half the time. I often think the futurists ought to get hold of her and her clothes and her talk."
Mrs. Porter laughed. "Perhaps she was born too soon."
"Indeed she was for her own comfort. Luella's as sentimental as they make 'em, and she still feels twenty. Board with her, indeed! You'd reduce fast enough then, I assure you. Folks have lived with her till they were ready to eat stewed barnacles; and the only way they got along was finally to get her to live somewhere else and let them have the house to themselves. They've done that sometimes, and Luella and her father camped out in the boathouse, I guess; I don't know exactly what they did do with themselves. Tried to get you! Well, I do declare! Luella's nerve is all right, whatever else she may lack."
"What I want to know," laughed Mrs. Porter, "is, when she says the view is 'sumtious,' whether she means 'scrumptious' or 'sumptuous.'"
Miss Barry smiled at her plate. "Luella ought to write a dictionary or a key or something," she said. – "Oh, I don't know what's the matter with women, anyway," she added with a sigh of disgust.
"Why, Miss Barry, what do you mean? They're finer every year! There are more of them every year for us to be proud of."
"A few high lights, maybe," admitted Miss Barry, "but look at the rank and file of 'em. Look at the clothes they'll consent to wear – and not wear. Just possessed with the devil o' restlessness, most of 'em, and willing to sell their souls for novelty. Isn't it enough to see 'em perspiring under velvet hats and ostrich feathers with muslin gowns in September, and carrying straw hats and roses above their furs in February? I get sick of the whole lot. Do you suppose for a minute they could wait for the season to come around, whichever it is? H'm!" Miss Barry put a world of scorn into the grunt.
Mrs. Porter, as she accepted a second helping of chowder, had a vision of Linda, capriciously regnant, and realized the status she must hold in her aunt's estimation.