Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said:
"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too much sense for that!"
"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.
"Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve. He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy factories."
"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money."
"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece Louise."
On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth. Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on her bosom.
"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry for him, too."
Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state most of the time.
"But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done. Only there's no use expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change. If Fordy won't marry Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him. I don't know what I shall say to her when she does come."