“Goin’?” he said; “waal, we’ve all gotter go some time oruther. The’ aint no real perma-nen-cy on this uth. Goin’? Waal, I’m”—he paused, and weighed the shuttle in his hand as though to aid him in balancing some important mental process. “Sho! I’m derned ’f I ain’t sorry. Squall comin’ up, an’ don’t y’ make no mistake,” he hurried on, not to be further committed to unguarded expression; “better look sharp, or y’ ’ll git a wettin’.”
A little puff of gray cloud, scurrying along in the south-east, had spread over half the sky, and now came a strong, eddying wind. A big raindrop made a dark spot on the sand before them; another fell on Miss Rittenhouse’s cheek, and then, with a vicious, uncertain patter, the rain began to come down.
“We’ll have to run for Poinsett’s,” said Horace, and stretched out his hand. She took it, and they ran.
Poinsett’s was just ahead—a white house on a lift of land, close back of the shore-line, with a long garden stretching down in front, and two or three poplar trees. The wind was turning up the pale under-sides of grass-blade and flower leaf, and whipping the shivering poplars silver white. Cap’n Poinsett, late of Gloucester, Massachusetts, was tacking down the path in his pea-jacket, with his brass telescope tucked under his arm. He was making for the little white summer-house that overhung the shore; but he stopped to admire the two young people dashing up the slope toward him, for the girl ran with a splendid free stride that kept her well abreast of Horace’s athletic lope.
“Come in,” he said, opening the gate, and smiling on the two young faces, flushed and wet; “come right in out o’ the rain. Be’n runnin’, ain’t ye? Go right int’ the house. Mother!” he called, “here’s Mr. Walpole ’n’ his young lady. You’ll hev to ex-cuse me; I’m a-goin’ down t’ my observatory. I carn’t foller the sea no longer myself, but I can look at them that dooz. There’s my old woman—go right in.”
He waddled off, leaving both of them redder than their run accounted for, and Mrs. Poinsett met them at the door, her arms folded in her apron.
“Walk right in,” she greeted them; “the cap’n he mus’ always go down t’ his observatory, ’s he calls it, ’n’ gape through thet old telescope of hisn, fust thing the’s a squall—jus’s if he thought he was skipper of all Long Island. But you come right int’ the settin’-room ’n’ make yourselves to home. Dear me suz! ’f I’d ’a’ thought I’d ’a’ had company I’d ’a’ tidied things up. I’m jus’ ’s busy as busy, gettin’ supper ready; but don’t you mind me—jus’ you make yourselves to home,” and she drifted chattering away, and they heard her in the distant kitchen amiably nagging the hired girl.
It was an old-time, low-ceiled room, neat with New England neatness. The windows had many panes of green flint glass, through which they saw the darkening storm swirl over the ocean and ravage the flower-beds near by.
And when they had made an end of watching Cap’n Poinsett in his little summer-house, shifting his long glass to follow each scudding sail far out in the darkness; and when they had looked at the relics of Cap’n Poinsett’s voyages to the Orient and the Arctic, and at the cigar-boxes plastered with little shells, and at the wax fruit, and at the family trousers and bonnets in the album, there was nothing left but that Miss Rittenhouse should sit down at the old piano, bought for Amanda Jane in the last year of the war, and bring forth rusty melody from the yellowed keys.
“What a lovely voice she has!” thought Horace as she sang. No doubt he was right. I would take his word against that of a professor of music, who would have told you that it was a nice voice for a girl, and that the young woman had more natural dramatic expression than technical training.