No staples were lacking in the lighthouse pantry, and Lorna was a capable housewife. Her culinary attempts might not match Miss Heppy's, but the latter praised her willing helper.
"I dunno what I should have done without ye, Lorna," she declared. "I just felt as though I was all in. I couldn't lift a finger to help myself, nor Tobias either."
"I am not sure that you shouldn't have a doctor, even now, Miss Heppy," the younger woman observed.
"For love's sake! What do I want a doctor messin' with me for? Doctors air for broken bones and young children. Common sense is the only doctor I've had for a good many years. And I know as well as you do, Lorna, that there ain't nothing re'lly the matter with me, only worriment. I'm an old fool, and that's all there is to it! But it does seem as though I couldn't begin all over again, saving the pennies and going without, and stinting ourselves. We'll end in the poorhouse, Tobias and me, like enough. Oh, dear, oh, dear!"
She concluded with a sob, and Lorna stole out of the room. There was nothing she could say that would really comfort Miss Heppy. She had, as Tobias said, "let go all holts." If the money was actually lost, the young woman pitied Tobias as much as she did Miss Heppy. The latter was going to be more lachrymose than ever.
"Perhaps Tobias is more than half right," Lorna thought, as she bustled about her work. "They never have had any good of the money they scrimped so hard to save; or of Captain Jethro's legacy, either. Just knowing it was in the bank was no very great satisfaction. And now it isn't!"
She prepared a hearty meal for Tobias, who ate gratefully but in a more serious mood than he was wont to display. He went up to the lamp room again as soon as the meal was over.
"There don't seem to be any let-up in sight," he told Lorna, "and I feel like I'd ought to be right on the job, as the feller said."
She cleared away and washed the dishes. All the time the booming of the breakers and the crash of the wind against the trembling light tower made unhappy music in her ears.
She went to the door to look out. The sand barrens were being most viciously beaten by both wind and spray. She dreaded the walk back to Clay Head. When she went she thought she would better follow the shell road even if it was much the longer way home. Not a moving object appeared in the near-by landscape.