“Good morning, Richard Hand, Jr.,” said the girl.
“Howdy, Mermaid,” retorted the boy.
They looked at each other a moment and smiled. They had become chums at school on the day they discovered an uncle in common. But Hosea Hand of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station, known as Ho Ha, was Dick Hand’s real uncle, the brother of his father, whereas he was only Mermaid’s uncle by adoption.
“To-night’s the night,” said the boy, amicably offering a jawbreaker. Mermaid accepted the candy and said, with her mouth full, “I’ve unfastened most of ’em, so if the wind doesn’t blow and make them bang, they’ll be all ready for you. All you’ll have to do is unhinge them. Do you suppose you can do that?”
“Sure,” said Dick. “They’re just ordinary shutters. Maybe a little rusted.”
“I oiled some of them while she was up street yesterday,” the girl reassured him.
They were conspiring, as a Hallowe’en prank, to detach as many shutters as possible from Keturah Smiley’s tightly shuttered house; and particularly, the shutters were to be got off the windows of the sacred, sealed front parlour. In the three years or more that Mermaid had been living with Cap’n Smiley’s sister these shutters had been unfastened but twice a year: for a few hours in spring and a few hours in fall at the time of Keturah Smiley’s semi-annual housecleaning. For six months, from spring to fall, and again for six months, from fall to spring, the front parlour and most of the other rooms of the house lay in darkness. It seemed impossible that anything, even dust, could enter there, but dust there always was when cleaning time came. At which Mermaid used to wonder greatly, and Keturah Smiley to rage.
“Where do you suppose it comes from?” the girl would ask Miss Smiley.
“I don’t know where it comes from, but I know where it’s going to,” Keturah replied, with such a savage accent as to make her remark almost profane.
“Hell?” inquired Mermaid.