It had in tow a stately little yacht, looking without sails like the skeleton of a spectre sloop.
“Ahoy! Captain Wells, ahoy!” he called.
Walter saw him and came about. In a few minutes of manœuvering the two men were jabbering over the beauties of Sago-ye-wat-ha. Richard had found his voice again.
It was long after the noon hour when they tied up at Phœbe Norris’ dock. Phœbe was not at home. She had found it impossible to sit and sew as she had planned. She could not decide whether she were suffering from a guilty conscience or a desire to gad; at any rate she concluded that Richard’s silence had put a spell on her cabin for the afternoon. Gathering up the sewing material, she called to “Count,” who was trying to stir up a rabbit among her cabbages, and plodded up the hill to the “Big House,” as the negroes called the Wells’ dwelling.
At the entrance to the drive she came upon a fattish young man, fairly well dressed—clean, at least, she said to herself—and evidently from the Big City.
He turned a broad Irish face upon her and opened a mouth which exposed large irregular teeth. Her father had such a face, she remembered distinctly, and just such great white teeth.
“Is it Mrs. Emma Wells I see before me?” He raised his hat and bowed like a Dublin ballad vender.
“As Mrs. Emma Wells is sixty years old,” Phœbe retorted, “it’s blind your eyes must be.”
“Blinded by the glamour of the sun on your——”
“Red head,” she helped.