She went out and Edna, feeling that she had been coddled long enough, took a seat on a low chair, and pretty soon dinner was announced, the two eating it very happily together. Edna had her chicken broth and toast for which she was quite ready by this time, declaring that she was actually hungry and that her head was steadily getting better.
As she had predicted, it was not bedtime when the sailing party returned, full of their doings. Edna was ready with plenty of questions and was told how Miss Eloise proved to be a good sailor, and had enjoyed the trip immensely, of how Ben and Mr. Ramsey had carried her ashore bodily, of how they had made a fire and cooked their supper, and last of all, how they had all missed her.
It was after Ben and Uncle Justus had departed for the yacht that Edna watching the lights in the harbor, heard Mr. Ramsey say, "We saw Mr. Horner in a new light to-day. Who could ever imagine him so tenderly anxious about his little [119]niece? He always seemed rather a cold undemonstrative person to me. I was certainly surprised when he insisted upon returning that he might be with Edna in our absence."
"I was rather surprised myself," responded Mrs. Ramsey, "though now I remember it, Jennie has told me that he is devoted to Edna, and though all his other pupils stand in awe of him, that she alone seems to have no fear. He must have a tender heart, for all his bushy eyebrows and stern exterior."
The twinkling lights in the harbor were still shining when the little girls went to bed, but before morning a wilder light was blazing from the point where old Cap'n Si's little house stood, and, the next morning when the children looked across to where yesterday they had seen the old man sitting on the bench outside his door, the smoke curling from the chimney and the flowers in his little garden making a brave showing, they beheld but a heap of blackened ruins.
Jennie was the first to see it and ran to her father who had just come down. "Oh, Papa," she cried, "just come here. There isn't any Cap'n Si's house any more."
"What's that?" said her father joining her at the window where she stood.
"Just look."
Mr. Ramsey did look but he saw only the charred bits of wood from which a slight smoke was rising. [120]"That's bad, very bad," he said shaking his head. "Why it was only last night that he was telling us that he was born in that house and hoped to die in it. I wonder how it could have happened. I hope no one was hurt. Who lives with him, daughter? Do you remember?"
"His daughter and her family, Bert is the oldest; he is off fishing in Captain Eli Brown's boat, then there is Louberta, but she's married. Amelia comes next, and then there's little Si, and Kitty is the youngest. They haven't any father, for he was lost at sea two years ago."