The girl, startled, looked all about the room and then back into Miss Heppy's softly smiling face.
"Do you hear it, Lorny? The sea a-roaring over the reef and the wind wailing about the light? That's my answer to your question. I seen so many women in my young days left lone and lorn because of that sea. Ah, my deary, 'tain't the men that go down to the sea in ships that suffer most. 'Tis their wives and mothers, and the little children they leave behind.
"When I was a young gal I never had a chance to meet ary men but them that airned their bread on the deep waters. My father was drowned off Hatteras, two brothers older than Tobias were of the crew of the windjammer, Seahawk. She never got around the Horn on her last v'y'ge. In seventeen homes about Clinkerport and Twin Rocks, the women mourned their dead on the Seahawk.
"No, no. I didn't stay single from choice. But I shut my ears and eyes to ary man that heard the call of the sea. And I never met no other, Lorny."
The uproar of the storm was an accompaniment to Miss Heppy's story. The solemnity of it quenched any further expression of what Lorna Nicholet considered her troubles. Within the kitchen there was silence for a space.
CHAPTER III
THE APEX OF THE STORM
Bedtime came, and Miss Heppy led Lorna, with the little whale oil hand lamp, up one flight of the spiral stairway and ushered her into the best bedroom. It was the whitewashed cell facing the ocean.
The waves boomed with sullen roar upon the rocks, breaking, it seemed, almost at the base of the lighthouse. Spray, as well as the sleet, dashed against the single unshuttered window. It was sheeted with white. But Miss Heppy drew the curtains close.
"You won't be afraid to sleep here alone, will you, child?" asked the lightkeeper's sister. "Tobias and I are only just across the landing. Though I guess Tobias will be up most o' the night watchin' the lamp, and he'll likely put your young man in his bed."