The expected storm arrived the next day, although not in its usual fury. However, as there was no real need for Muriel or her grandfather to cross the bay, which was wind-lashed into white-capped, choppy waves, they remained in the house.
“Queer the way our reg’lar crasher of a storm is delayin’ this year,” Captain Ezra said on the third night after the rains began. Muriel, who was washing cups at the time, suddenly whirled, and throwing her arms about the old man, regardless of her soapy hands, she cried passionately:
“I’d be glad if they never came, Grand-dad. I don’t know why ’tis, but when the lightning zigzags all aroun’ like a sword of fire, the thunder seems to roar, ‘Some day I’ll crash yer light that’s tryin’ to defy me.’”
The old captain looked truly distressed. “Rilly gal,” he said, “I wish yo’ didn’t take such queer notions. You’re jest like yer mother was before yo’. She used to come singing down from the top o’ the cliff and tell me yarns ’bout what the wind and the waves had been tellin’ her. Lem used to say she’d ought to be sent somewhar’s an’ taught to write stories. That’d be a good channel, he opinioned, to let out the notions that was cooped up in her head, an’ here yo’ are jest like her.”
The old man looked so truly distressed that the girl exclaimed contritely: “Yo’ dear ol’ Grand-dad, if it’s worryin’ yo’, I’ll try to be diff’rent. I might be like Lindy Wixon now. She don’t have any queer notions.
“I asked her once if she wouldn’t like to visit the star that’s so bright in the evenin’, an’ she stared like she thought I was loony, honest she did.” Then, stooping, the girl laughingly peered into the troubled eyes beneath the shaggy grey brows. “How would yo’ like to change gals, Grand-dad? I kin——”
“Belay there, fust mate. That tack’s crazier than the fust.” Then lifting a listening ear, he added: “The wind’s rising. I reckon the big storm is crusin’ this way arter all.” But Captain Ezra was wrong, for, although the wind blew a gale and the leaden clouds were hurled low above the light and the rain now and then fell in wind-driven sheets, changing at times to hail that rattled against the windows, still the tempest that often came in the fall was delayed. Perhaps, indeed, as the captain began to hope, it was not coming at all that year, for, whenever it had passed, it had taken its toll of lives and boats, however faithfully the warning light flashed its beacon rays out through the storm.
There was a week of inclement weather, and Muriel often stood in the warm kitchen looking out across the waters of the bay that were sometimes black under the sudden squalls and sometimes livid green when the sun and rain were struggling together for mastery, but the girl’s thoughts were not of the weather but of what might be happening in Tunkett.
In fancy she looked into the newly adorned cabin where Captain Barney had lived alone for so many years, but, try as she might, she could not picture there the old “mither” he had so yearned to see.
Then in imagination she visited the glassed-in veranda of Doctor Winslow’s home, but it was empty and the windows of the house were covered with heavy wooden blinds.