"I wish you wouldn't!" sighed Lorna. "He's not my young man, whatever else he may be. I here and now disown all part and parcel in Ralph Endicott."
"I dunno what Miss Ida will say," the woman observed mournfully. "It'll be a shock to her. Wal, try to sleep, deary, if the wintry winds do blow. I guess 'twill clear, come morning. These late winter storms never last."
She had shaken out a voluminous canton-flannel nightgown which she laid over the foot of the bed. Now she pricked up the two round wicks of the lamp with a pin, and after kissing the visitor left her to seek repose.
She heard a heavy step on the stair as she reached the foot of it, so held the kitchen door open for her brother. Tobias had left Ralph to watch the lamp while he came down on some small errand. Finding his sister alone, the lightkeeper lingered.
"I give it as my opinion, Heppy," he said, slowly puffing on his clay pipe, "that it was lucky we was born handsome instead o' rich."
"You speak for yourself, Tobias," rejoined his sister, with good-natured irony. "My beauty never struck in, so's to be chronic, as ye might say. And I could do right now with lots more money than we've got."
"You'd only put it in the Clinkerport Bank—you know you would," chuckled Tobias. "And the most useless dollar in the world—to the owner I mean—is a dollar in the bank."
"You never did properly appreciate money."
"No, thanks be! Not according to your standard of appreciation, Heppy. Money is only good for what you spend it for. A dollar in the bank that airns ye three cents a year ain't even worth thinkin' of—let alone talking about. You might just as well hide it under the hearthstone. It would be less worry."
"We ain't got enough in the Clinkerport Bank to worry you none," scoffed his sister.