Jane made no reply, but started unexpectedly to her feet. The two girls clambered down from the cliff in silence, and began to walk up the shore. At the path leading to the hotel, Jane paused and shrank away.
“How you cough!” said Miss Carruth compassionately. “You are quite wet with this heavy dew. Do come into the cottage with me.”
She put her hand affectionately on the damp shoulder of Jane’s blue and white calico blouse.
The hotel lights reached faintly after the figures of the two. Jane looked stunted and shrunken; Helen’s superb proportions seemed to quench her. The fisherman’s daughter lifted her little homely face.
“I don’t suppose,” she faltered, “you’d be willing to be told. But mother and me have done for him so long—he ain’t well, the minister ain’t—there’s ways he likes his tea made, and we het the bricks, come cold weather, for him—and—all those little things. We’ve tried to take good care of Mr. Bayard! It’s been a good many years!” said Jane piteously. It was more dreadful to her to give up boarding the minister, than it was that he should marry the summer lady in the gold and purple gowns.
“I suppose you and he will go somewhere?” she added bitterly.
“We shan’t forget you, Jane,” said Helen gently.
The calico blouse shoulder shook off the delicate hand that rested upon it.
“I won’t come in,” she said. “I’ll go right home.”
Jane turned away, and walked across the cliffs. The hotel lights fell short of her, and the darkness swallowed her undersized, pathetic figure, as the mystery of life draws down the weak, the uncomely, and the unloved.