“If you had written it yourself”—suggested Bayard humbly. “But of course you had other things to do.”
Helen gave him an inscrutable look. She made no reply. They passed the fish-house, and the old clam-digger, who was sitting on his overturned basket in the sun, opening clams with a blunt knife, and singing hoarsely:—
“The woman’s ashore,
The child’s at the door,
The man’s at the wheel.
“Storm on the track,
Fog at the back,
Death at the keel.
“You, mate, or me,
Which shall it be?
God, He won’t tell.
Drive on to ——!”
“There is Mr. Salt,” said Helen; for the two had come slowly up in silence to the old gate, (fastened with a rope tied in a sailor’s knot), that gave the short cut across the meadow to the Mainsail summer hotel.
“He is watching for me. How sober he looks! Perhaps something dreadful has happened to Mrs. Salt. Wait a minute. Let me run in!”
She tossed her sun-umbrella, gloves, and saxifrage in a heap across Bayard’s arm, and ran like a girl or a collie swaying across the meadow in the wind. In a few minutes she walked back, flushed and laughing.
“Pepper can’t go!” she cried. “He’s got the colic. He’s swallowed a celluloid collar. Mr. Salt says he thought it was sugar. I must go right along and catch the car.”
“You have eight minutes yet,” said Bayard joyously, “and I can go too!”