"I shall count on you, nevertheless. Good-by and thank you for being the dear generous girl that you are."
Gwen watched the red jersey disappear over the brow of the hill. "'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good," she said to herself. "I suppose the Lord sent a millionaire my way just to see what I'd do, and to teach me not to make vain boasts. I feel very meek when I think of Commonwealth Avenue."
CHAPTER XVII
THE END OF THE SEASON
Within a week most of the summer cottages were boarded up and closed for the winter. Only a few lights still twinkled out at night along shore. The crickets sang in the dry grass or under some still warm hearthstone. The waxy cranberries had turned a rosier pink and down in the marsh hardhack and roseberries disputed the sway of golden rod and asters. Outside Ira Baldwin's barn was a row of newly hewn decoy ducks, freshly painted and ready for use. The report of the hunters' rifles was already heard in the early morning as the "honk! honk!" of wild geese betokened a flight southward. Strange weirdly-moving fingers of light played across the northern skies at night, rosy pulsings and quivering gleams travelled from left to right and back again, growing and fading and growing again mysteriously.
Still Miss Elliott and Gwen stayed on, and though from the cottage by the cove the tenants had all gone, Kenneth remained, having persuaded Cap'n Ben to take him in for the little time he should be on the island. He had seen his sister, with her children and the maid, safely on the steamer which should bear them to New York, and then he had returned with a feeling of possessing the beauty of Fielding's Island in a new sense, since now, in all its length and breadth were no summer visitors remaining except himself and the dwellers at Wits' End. Sheldon woods seemed a vast silence, the barrier of rocks along the ocean front a fortress with but a solitary sentinel left to watch. Jagged Island, afar off, appeared unapproachable. The Domhegan's single trip a day served to give one the feeling of not being cut off entirely from the outside world, though there was an ever present sense of indifference to what might be going on in other places. The wizard's most triumphant hour was near when his fetters would bind so tightly that no one could set foot outside his realm.
Miss Phosie coddled her new boarder unremittingly, and, because of their nearer association, Luther Williams and the young man became closer friends than ever, and spent much time together. Frequently Gwen made a third in long walks in the crisp air, and sometimes Kenneth would go on a cruise to a near island with Luther Williams as skipper, and it was seldom that they returned without a cargo of sketches.
To Daddy Lu Gwen had opened her heart and he had received her confidences, as she knew he would, sympathetically and with grave interest. "Of course we are not engaged," Gwen told him. "That wouldn't do, but I suppose it is what people call an understanding, and we are very happy. It will be years before we can think of marrying, perhaps we shall never be able to, but it doesn't matter so long as we love each other. So, dear Daddy Lu, you will probably see us mooning about the island for many summers to come. So long as we shall not be living in the same city we shall have to be separated in winter, but we hope our summers can be spent here. I shall go on teaching while he is working, and it will not seem hard to either of us."
"Do you like teaching?" asked Mr. Williams.