She wore a yellow oilskin hat, with the brim bent down around her withered face, and a dirty sailor’s middy over a bedraggled skirt. Holding her freshly-caught lobster in a way that would have been precarious to most people, she talked to it like a pet, and as I continued to watch her, fascinated, she carried it tenderly away. I wondered if she would drop it into boiling water, which was its natural destiny, or take it into the kitchen and feed it a saucer of milk. She did not appear again, but realizing that from behind some shutter she might be observing me, I became self-conscious and moved on.
Judge Bell was leaning against the door of the Winkle-Man’s loft and greeted me like an old friend as I passed. I knew that he had strolled up there this morning to find out what had transpired after I left him the day before.
“Are you going to take the house?” he asked.
“I hope so. I’m going back home this afternoon and tell my husband about it.”
“Oh, ye’ve got a husband, have ye?” said Caleb, appearing with his winkle-fork in his hand.
“What would I want that big house for if I didn’t have any husband?”
“Give it up! What do you want it for anyway? The judge and me have give up wondering what summer people wants anything for, ain’t we, judge?”
Judge Bell would not answer; he was afraid Caleb was going to spoil the sale.
“They always pick out the worst ramshackle down-at-the-heels places that they can get for nothin’, and talks about the ‘possibilities’ of ’em, like a revivalist prayin’ over a sinner, until you would think the blessed old rat-trap was something!”
“The House of the Five Pines isn’t a rat-trap,” said the judge, touchily.