The window-seat was fast nearing completion and so the group turned admiring eyes from the pictures to the handiwork of Sam Peters.
“Make way, thar!” his wife was heard to exclaim a moment later from the rear. Everyone turned to see that portly woman approaching, a somewhat faded turkey-red lounge cover dragging one fringed corner, while four pillows of as many different colors were in her arms.
Lindy and Muriel sprang forward to assist her, but Mrs. Sam would permit them to do nothing but hold the pillows, while she herself placed them at what she believed to be fashionable angles.
Then with arms akimbo, she stood back and admired the result.
She was sure that Mrs. Judge Lander herself could not have arranged the pillows with more artistic effect. “We’d ought to all of us fix our cabins up that fine,” she announced, “an’ I’m a-goin’ to.”
“That red’s powerful han’some,” Mrs. Jubal Smalley remarked. “Thar’d ought to be a plant settin’ on the window sill, just atop o’ it.”
No one noticed when little Zoeth slipped away, but they all saw him return triumphantly bearing his greatest treasure, a potted geranium which had three scarlet blossoms. With cheeks burning and eyes glowing, the little fellow placed it upon the window sill. “It’s for yer mither to keep,” he said, looking up at the Irishman, who was deeply touched, for well he knew how the little fellow had nursed the plant, which the year before Lindy had rescued from a rubbish heap in the summer colony.
Out of his savings Captain Barney had purchased from Mrs. Sol a table and four straight chairs.
When everything was shipshape and Sam Peters was packing away his tools, Captain Barney spoke. “Neighbors,” he began, “in the name of me ol’ mither I want to be thankin’ yo’. It’s a hard life she’s been havin’ in the ol’ country, what wi’ raisin’ tin of her own an’ two that she tuk as were left orphants. Says she, when no one else wanted ’em, ‘I’ll take ’em, the poor darlints. If thar’s allays room for one more, the saints helpin’, we’ll stretch that room so ’twill hold the two of ’em.’ An’ now that the last of ’em is growd, it’s aisy I want her to be takin’ it. She can be drawin’ the rocker as yo’ all gave me up to the open door an’ she kin jest be settin’ an’ rockin’ an’ restin’ an’ lookin’ out at the sea. ’Twill be nigh like Heaven for me ol’ mither, an’ it’s thankin’ ye again I am for all ye’ve been doin’.”
Somebody tried to say something, but it ended in a sincere handshaking, and many eyes were moist. Then Muriel and her dear friend were left alone. With an arm about the girl he loved, the old man stood looking out at sea.