Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod

AUTHOR OF Tobias o' the Light, Cap'n Jonah's Fortune Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper, etc.
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY R. EMMETT OWEN
Published by arrangement with George Sully & Company Printed in U.S.A.
COPYRIGHT, 1921 (AS A SERIAL) COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
Seated on this sunshiny morning in his old armchair of bent hickory, between his knees a cane on the head of which his gnarled hands rested, Captain Ira Ball was the true retired mariner of the old school. His ruddy face was freshly shaven, his scant, silvery hair well smoothed; everything was neat and trig about him, including his glazed, narrow-brimmed hat, his blue pilot-cloth coat, pleated shirt front as white as snow, heavy silver watch chain festooned upon his waist-coat, and blue-yarn socks showing between the bottom of his full, gray trouser legs and his well-blacked low shoes.
For Cap'n Ira had commanded passenger-carrying craft in his day, and was a bit of a dandy still. The niceties of maritime full dress were as important to his mind now that he had retired from the sea to spend his remaining days in the Ball homestead on Wreckers' Head as when he had trod the quarter-deck of the old Susan Gatskill , or had occupied the chief seat at her saloon table.
I don't know what's to become of us, repeated Cap'n Ira, wagging a thoughtful head, his gaze, as that of old people often is, fixed upon a point too distant for youthful eyes to see.
I can't see into the future, Ira, any clearer than you can, rejoined his wife, glancing at his sagging, blue-coated shoulders with some gentle apprehension.
She was a frail, little, old woman, one of those women who, after a robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines remaining. Her face was wrinkled like a russet apple in February, and it had the colorings of that grateful fruit. She sat on the stone slab which served for a back door stoop peeling potatoes.