“Willing but awkward, I would describe myself if I were advertising for a situation,” she told them. “Nancy has a special talent for cooking, but I have a genius for breaking dishes and scalding myself.”
Christina, therefore, stayed to cook the dinner and to bake a second edition of the cake upon which misfortune had fallen yesterday. Olaf came across the hill through the rain and sat for long in the kitchen with his mother, making her the most peaceful and uninterrupted visit that had been possible since his return. Nancy, going in and out on various errands, heard snatches of tales of the high seas, of whales and hurricanes, of hot foreign ports baking in the tropical sun, of winds that cut you like a knife as you slid across the slippery decks with great waves washing over you, of the longing for the land and home, and also—Olaf came to it slowly—of the restless desire that grows and grows, of the sailor on leave to be at sea again.
“Ah, but you wouldn’t go just yet!” cried Christina in alarm.
“No, not just yet. John Herrick has been so kind to me that I feel like standing by him in—in something that he has on hand just now.” But Olaf leaned back in his chair and looked out through the blurred windows as though he were already impatient to be off.
They were an oddly assorted pair, he so tall, straight, and American, she, despite her ordinary clothes and her careful English, so foreign still. Beatrice thought so, as she came into the kitchen in the late afternoon, and found them both making preparations to depart. The day had been a long and heavy one to her. Her mind was full of what she had seen the night before, although she had not yet had time to discuss it in private with Nancy. She longed to ride over to the Herricks’ house, for what purpose she could not herself say. The pouring rain, however, made such an expedition so unreasonable that she could not, in the whole course of the day, think of an excuse urgent enough to explain her going.
“I wish you were not going to be so wet,” she said to Christina. “You will be soaked again before you get home.”
“It is not raining so much now,” Olaf observed, reaching for his cap that lay on the window-sill, “it will soon—”
He interrupted himself suddenly and turned round to them with a delighted grin. He spoke softly and jerked his head toward the window where, to Beatrice’s astonishment, she saw dimly through the wet pane that a face was peering in. The close-set eyes and ungainly nose showed that it was Dabney Mills.
“I never knew before just what the word eavesdropper meant,” said Olaf. “Think how the water must be pouring off the roof and running down that fellow’s neck!”
Seeing that he had been observed, Dabney came to the door and a moment later stood, a bedraggled and dejected figure, just inside the threshold.