“What a splendid woman you are! I know that happiness and joy will come to you. One who has done what you have done cannot fail to realize it. This hour will always be a very sweet one in my memory, and I shall never forget it.”
“Nor I,” she said softly, “for, through you, I have begun to find myself.”
CHAPTER XXXI
PEACE AND PROSPERITY
The village of Freekirk Head prospered once Code Schofield, Bijonah Tanner, and Jed Martin had started the ball rolling. Inside a week another large consignment of fish arrived. Boughton was ready for it, and for all that could come, he said, in the next two months.
This was music to the ears of Code Schofield and the crack crew of the Charming Lass, and nine days after they had picked up their mooring in the little crescent harbor they were off again, salt and bait-laden, for the Banks, expecting to do a little haddocking if they failed to load down with cod before they disappeared in October.
Seven schooners sailed with him that day, and, at the end of nine weeks, the Lass weighed anchor and charged home with the first halibut that had come into Freekirk Head in years. On this trip, when he was left in peace, Code displayed all the remarkable “nose” for fish that his father had had before him.
And when he had weighed out the last of his halibut Bill Boughton led him into the little office of 304 the fishstand and offered him a quarter interest in the business.