Billy was hurt. "I don't mean to be nasty, father; but you asked me—"
"There comes the mail boat," interrupted Bartlett firmly.
Billy looked at it and sighed. It was the last of August and Jeroboam Martin had not come. Had he forgotten her in two short months?
Bartlett laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder. "Forget him, girlie. He's not worthy of you."
"He said he would come," whispered Billy.
"If he doesn't, dear, you have me. We have stood together through everything for eighteen years and will stand, still, eh, Billy?"
Billy bent her head and rubbed her cheek against the hand on her shoulder with a half laugh and a half sob.
With the first sight of the smoke on the horizon, heralding the approach of the principal event of the day, the arrival of the evening mail, a crowd had begun to gather, the usual motley crowd of a summer resort on the coast. Townspeople hung indifferently on the outskirts, while the summer visitors, in dainty dresses and baggy trousers, sun-burnt, jovial, indefatigable, pressed to the front. The hum of talk and laughter grew as the crowd grew, good-natured, meaningless chatter. The sight of the Mary Gloucester, steaming gracefully into port, was greeted with a gay flutter of handkerchiefs and straw hats, and Billy and Bartlett, standing where the yacht would dock, were soon the center of the laughing, merry crowd, ready and eager to welcome home the stout widow, her unfortunate chaperon and the two "supplements," as a village wag called the fat Henry and the slim Bertie.
As the yacht drew near, the widow's corpulent form was seen by the rail, on one side a tall youth, and on the other, two, side by side and apparently in no very good humor.
"Three, by George," cried Blatts, a prosperous brewer from Milwaukee. "She left here with two and returns with three. Where did she get him, Bartlett?"