“Don’t put away the beach-plum jelly at all,” I said. “I’ll take it back to New York with me.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure till I saw my husband.”
Mrs. Dove belonged to a different generation.
“It’s time to meet him now,” I replied. “Will you be here when I come back? We sha’n’t stay any longer than we have to, but I know he will want to see things for himself. I’d like my husband to know you, Mrs. Dove; you’ve been so kind!”
Mrs. Dove blushed. “I’ll just finish up here,” she answered. “I ain’t in any hurry.”
She stood in the doorway, smiling comfortably, as I walked off. She looked like part of the house as she lingered there, motherly and pleasant, more congenial to it than Mattie had ever been or I would ever have become.
“There is no use,” I thought, “in putting a foreign waif or a city woman in a Cape Cod house. It simply refuses to assimilate them. It was a grand adventure—but it is over!”
The Winkle-Man was mending his nets in the sail-loft when I passed. He came to the doorway and called to me.
“Say, how about them vines and shrubs you asked me to get for you? Do you want ’em to-day? It’s time to get ’em in before frost.”
“I’m leaving,” I confessed. “I’m giving up the house.”