Neither were the gossips enlightened as to the financial standing of the widow, or how much had been laid away by her husband, or her means of a livelihood.
Jess knew, however, and Jess only; but he was the last person to impart such data to a curious public. What they did see was that he at once assumed a fatherly protectorship over his little niece, and she became his sole charge and care in life. Though she ate and slept at home, tripped alone to school, and to church each Sunday hand in hand with Uncle Jess, his store was her playhouse and his love her happiness until girlhood was reached. Often on summer days he left the store, utterly disregarding trade, and with her took long rambles over the island, hunting gulls' eggs and gathering shells, flowers, or berries. He built her a boat and taught her to row it in the little harbor, talked to her for hours of the great world and its people, of the planets and their motions, of right and wrong, of religion and God. He aided her in her lessons, teaching her more and faster than she learned at school; and when her fingers could reach across the strings of his old brown violin, he taught her the lore of its wondrous voice.
And so the happy years of her girlhood passed, until now, a woman grown, she had learned the lesson of loving, and had come to him with her unspoken plea for help. Never had she appealed to him in vain, and never would, so long as his keen mind was active and heart normal. For weeks he pondered over this most difficult of all problems, and then he acted.
"I've got a leetle matter to talk over with yer mother to-night, Mona," he said, "an' if ye don't mind ye might go an' make a call on one of the neighbors. It's a sorter peculiar business 'n' it's better we're 'lone till it's settled."
And it was "peculiar," and so much so that Jess talked for one hour with Mrs. Hutton in an absent-minded way, while he studied the cheerful open fire, cogitating, meanwhile, how best to utter what he had to say, while she sat sewing diligently, on the opposite side of the sitting-room table.
"Letty," he said at last, "hev ye noticed Mona hain't been overcheerful the last three months, an' seems to be sorter broodin' over suthin'?"
"I have, Jess," replied Mrs. Hutton, looking up; "and it's all due to notions that Mr. Hardy's put into her head 'bout her playin' an' praisin' her so much. I've knowed all 'long her wastin' time fiddlin' wouldn't serve no good purpose in the long run."
It wasn't an auspicious opening to the subject uppermost in the mind of Jess, but he paid no heed to it. "Letty," he continued calmly, "fiddlin' hain't nothin' to do with the state o' Mona's mind, 'n' if ye'd watched her as clus as I hev, ye'd know it. Do ye 'member when ye was a gal how Hitty Baker, ez used ter live up to the north village, got crossed in love 'n' kept broodin' on't until one day she was missin', an' 'bout a week arter they found her hangin' in the old mill? Thar's no tellin' what a gal'll do an' when she'll do it, if she gits to broodin' over sich matters."
"I hope you don't think Mona, brought up as she has been, will be such a fool as Hitty Baker was," rejoined Mrs. Hutton, sharply. "Mona's got more sense."
"'Tain't a matter o' sense," Jess retorted quickly, "it's a matter o' nater 'n' 'magination, 'n' the more o' them peculiarities a gal's got, the more onsartin she is apt to be, 'n' ez I said, Mona ain't herself these days, 'n' unless suthin's done to change the current o' her mind, fust thing you'll find, some day, she's a missin'."