"Nawthin' keeps me awake," returned the first beginning to drive a stake into the ground.
"Where's this Miss Elliott from?" asked Mart Johnson. "She's noo, ain't she?"
"She was up here for a week last summer," Thad Eaton answered. "Liked the place and bought this lawt in Ben's pasture. She's from down around Baltimore or Washington, I hear."
"Single woman?"
"Yeah. Ben says he'd rather sell to them and widders, then he knows there'll be no men-folks trying to get the best of him. He's terrible afraid of city sharpers. Moreover, he says he don't care about a passel of children traipsing over his land."
The four men worked mightily to lift the great stones which they laid for the foundation of the cottage. There were many orders of "Shove her a little to the west'ard, Jim." "Jest a little wee mite to the north'ard," and the work went on so rapidly that in a short time the length and breadth of the foundation were evident.
Down by the cove, toward which the houses of the fishermen faced, a half busy, half idle life went on. At the fish house the morning's catch was being weighed. The lobstermen came in one after another from hauling their traps. Captain Purdy's vessel lay at anchor, her crew lounging about with tales of the last cruise. Luther Williams stood listening to the good-natured chaff. Big Mil Stevens was weighing the fish, once in a while putting in a humorous word as the others talked. A fat-faced, round-bodied man, ready with anecdotes, sat on an overturned keg.
"What ye think Hen Fosdick was telling me, yist'day?" he said. "Told me he didn't think nawthin' of eatin' a six pound cawd all by himself. Said he'd done it. Showed me one 'bout the size of what he'd eat the day before. 'Bout like this." He touched with the toe of his boot a slippery fish which lay on the floor. "Said it didn't bawther him a mite to eat it all."
"What do you think of that, Mil?" asked one of the men.
Mil slid a shining mass from the scales. "Wal," he drawled, "I think he was either a hawg or a liar." A shout of laughter went up at this in which Luther Williams joined. When he laughed the man's whole face changed, and one might have said that at one time he knew well how to be merry. He was a man above medium height, spare of flesh, with far-seeing eyes and a mouth whose melancholy droop seldom altered to a smile. He wore a close-cut beard and mustache, and his iron gray hair where it was not too short curled about his forehead. He was not much of a talker, but was evidently held in respect, for in that community, where even children called their elders by their first name, he was the only one dignified by the title of "Mister." Leaving the jolly crew, he trundled his barrow out of the fish house over the boards of the boat-landing, and on uphill to where the white cottages shone out in the brightness of the May morning. At the rear of one of the houses he stopped and went in. The room he entered was a cheerful sunshiny kitchen with painted floors of yellow, doors of blue, mouldings of pink. It was fresh and clean. Geraniums blossomed in the windows. The great stove sent out almost too intense a heat for the day, but the woman at the table making pies would have scorned to open a window. She was a small, neat-featured person, light-haired, blue-eyed, faded before her time. She wore a gray calico gown of indefinite pattern.