"Mind you," he chuckled after a minute, when Betty had snuggled down beside him, and MacRae perched on the log by her, "I don't say I like the idea. It don't seem fair for a man to raise a daughter and then have some young fellow sail up and take her away just when she is beginning to make herself useful."
"Daddy, you certainly do talk awful nonsense," Betty reproved.
"I expect you haven't talked much else the last little while," he retorted.
Betty subsided. MacRae smiled. There was a whimsicality about Gower's way of taking this that pleased MacRae.
They toasted their feet at the fire until the wavering flame burned down to a bed of glowing coals. They talked of this and that, of everything but themselves until the moon was swimming high and the patches of cottony cloud sailing across the moon's face cast intense black patches on the silvery radiance of the sea.
"I've got some clams in a bucket," Gower said at last. "Let's roast some. You get plates and forks and salt and pepper and butter, Bet, while I put the clams on the fire."
Betty went away to the house. Gower raked a flat rock, white-hot, out to the edge of the coals and put fat quahaugs on it to roast. Then he sat back and looked at MacRae.
"I wonder if you realize how lucky you are?" he said.
"I think I do," MacRae answered. "You don't seem much surprised."