Biddy laughed and Tom re-echoed it, for indeed he had found a friend. He did as he was bidden, and the warm feathers felt sweet to the cold body, and the sun had been shining a long time before Tom Cooper opened his eyes to the light of day.
When he did come down in the morning he found a large-eyed child looking into his face.
She was fingering a little locket which Tom had seen Jim trying to wrench from the baby’s neck when he went after him, and he picked it up in his fingers and read:
“To my darling Annie, from her father.”
Then Tom Cooper knew that he stood in the presence of his benefactor’s grandchild. He took a solemn oath that he would watch over and care for her until some one had a better right.
Biddy went to the city that day, leaving the boathouse closed, and purchased a suit, hat, shoes and other things needed by a man, and with the outfit she bought a wig and a set of whiskers.
“You’ll wear these for a long time,” said she slowly, “for then you won’t give away your identity, for if you should do that you would be taken back to the Island.”
So they lived on and on for many a year. The little Standish child was no more than a baby when she was first brought to the boathouse, but upon this beautiful summer morning when this story again opens she is sitting upon a porch swinging in the hammock.
Biddy had arranged the house so that now it comfortably held three, and Tom had a good position and came home every night. Often after the child went to bed the man and woman would gravely talk over the future of the little girl, whom they had both grown to love.