All at once he caught sight of Captain Briggs. He stopped his song, by the lantern-flanked gateway, and waved a hand of greeting.
“Top o’ the morning to you, grandfather!” cried he. There he stood overflooded with life, strength, spirits. His body gleamed with glistening brine; his face, lighted by a smile of boyish frankness, shone in the morning sun. His thick, black hair that he had combed straight back with his fingers, dripped seawater on his bronzed, muscular shoulders.
“God, what a man!” the captain thought. “Hard as nails, and ridged with muscle. He’s only twenty-one, but he’s better than ever I was, at my best!”
And once again, he felt his old heart expand with pride and hope—hope that reached out to lay eager hold upon the future and its dreams.
“I want to see you, sir, before breakfast,” said the captain.
Hal nodded comprehension. From the hedge he broke a little twig, and held it up.
“Here’s the switch, gramp,” said he whimsically. “You’d better use it now, while I’ve got bare legs.”
The old man had to smile. With eyes of profound affection he gazed at Hal. Sunlight on his head and on Hal’s struck out wonderful contrasts of snow and jet. The luminous, celestial glow of a June morning on the New England coast—a morning gemmed with billions of dewdrops flashing on leaf and lawn, a morning overbrooded by azure deeps of sky unclouded—folded the world in beauty.
A sense of completion, of loveliness fulfilled compassed everything. Autumn looks back, regretfully. Winter shivers between memories and hopes. Spring hopes more strongly still—but June, complete and resting, says: “Behold!”
Such was that morning; and the captain, looking at his boy, felt its magic soothing the troubled heart within him. On the lawn, two or three robins were busy. Another, teetering high on the plumy crest of a shadowing elm, was emptying its heart of melody.