Each time the boat had to come about for a new tack, necessitating the sail's passing over Miss Martha's head, the air was vibrant with her small shrieks and louder suggestions; but to-day, every time they settled down for the smooth run, a pensiveness fell upon her.
"The Mill Farm is looking real prosperous, Benny," she remarked during one of these calms.
"I s'pose so," returned the boy. "More folks comin' to the islands every summer. More folks to want their truck."
"Seems to me," observed Miss Martha, "I used to hear that things weren't very pleasant between the mainland folks and the islanders."
"Used to be so. Hated each other, I've heard my father say, but sence I've been a-growin' up things have changed. We've ben findin' out that they wasn't all potato vines, and they've ben findin' out that we ain't all fish scales. My father says Thinkright Johnson's at the bottom o' the change."
"Thinkright's a good man," returned Miss Martha, and with that she fell into pensive mood again until time for another acute moment of dodging the sail and coming about.
To think that in those few hours Judge Trent should have come to take such an interest in Sylvia. So her thoughts ran. Was it the girl's good looks, or was it simply that twinges of the judge's conscience had induced the wish to make the amende honorable, and that the gift of the expensive boat was an effort to reinstate the giver in his own eyes?
Something of an intimate nature must have passed between them. To what could "the rosy cloud" have reference which should bring such conscious color to Sylvia's softly rounded cheek?
Miss Lacey shook her head. "If I only had Thinkright's chance," she thought, "I'd find out; but men are so queer. Probably he won't make the least effort. Provoking!"
She was correct in her suspicion. Thinkright did not ask any questions. He suspected that the judge's interview with his niece might have brought to light some of her new ideas, and he knew the judge's opinion of all that class of thought which he termed transcendental; but however ironical might be the reference in the boat's name, he would not have gone to the trouble of having it lettered thereon without a kindly intent.