“It’s down by the viaduck—right now,” said Lavinia. Then she added, shyly, pretending to be deeply engrossed with her glove: “I’m just goin’.”
“Oh, are you?” said Diller, seizing his hat and stick and coming eagerly out to her. “And may I go with you? Will you take me in hand? I haven’t the ghost of an idea where the viaduct is.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll show you,” she said, with a glad little laugh, and they went swiftly down the stairs and out into the sweet evening.
“You know,” she said, as he opened the gate for her with a deference to which she was not accustomed, and which gave her a thrill of innocent exultation, “the Alaska Indians are just comin’ back from hop-pickin’ down around Puyallup an’ Yakima an’ Seattle, an’ they alwus stop here an’ have races with the Lummies an’ the Nooksacks.”
Mr. Diller drew a deep breath.
“Do you know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything—not for anything I can think of. And yet I should if it hadn’t been for”—he hesitated, and then added—“your mother.” They looked into each other’s eyes and laughed, very foolishly and happily.
The sun was setting—moving slowly, scarlet and of dazzling brilliancy, down the western sky, which shaded rapidly from pale blue to salmon, and from salmon to palest pea-green. Beneath, superbly motionless, at full tide, the sound stretched mile on mile away to Lummi peninsula, whose hills the sun now touched—every fir-tree on those noble crests standing out against that burnished background. A broad, unbroken path of gold stretched from shore to shore. Some sea-gulls were circling in endless, silvery rings through the amethystine haze between sea and sky. The old, rotten pier running a mile out to sea shone like a strip of gold above the deep blue water. It was crowded with people, indifferent to danger in their eagerness to see the races. Indeed, there seemed to be people everywhere; on the high banks, the piers, and the mills scattered over the tide-flats, and out in row boats. Two brass bands were playing stirring strains alternately. There was much excitement—much shouting, hurrying, running. The crowd kept swaying from the viaduct over to the pier, and from the pier back to the viaduct. Nobody seemed to be quite sure where the start would be; even the three judges, when asked, yelled back, as they clambered down to their row-boat: “We don’t know. Wait and see!”
“What accommodating persons,” said Mr. Diller, cheerfully. “Shall we go over to the pier? The tide seems to be running that way.”
“Oh, the tide’s not running now,” said Lavinia. “It’s full.”
Diller looked amused. “I meant the people,” he said.