She no longer could deny the truth. Ralph Endicott was in dire peril if the Nelly G. was threatened with disaster. And she could not hide the fact that she loved him!
CHAPTER XXV
ACROSS THE YEARS
The Nicholets and the Endicotts had been sworn allies for generations. Their genealogical roots were entwined in early Massachusetts Bay history. Their forebears had perhaps helped each other burn witches and slaughter Indians in the ancient days. Basicly the families were even now as puritanical as the Sacred Codfish.
Yet under ordinary circumstances the Endicotts and the Nicholets, although living side by side, would seldom think of interfering in—or even discussing—each other's private affairs. New England people are that way—the better class. Without being invited to do so Miss Ida would not have concerned herself in the Endicotts' financial difficulties except in this extraordinary situation.
The shocking story that Lorna had brought home—this utterly preposterous accusation against Ralph—quite startled Miss Ida out of the rut of usage. Although she had been consulted in their trouble by no member of the Endicott family, she felt that she must offer sympathy and—if possible—assistance. Although she seldom troubled her mind about financial affairs—leaving those details to her brother—Miss Ida was really the head of the Nicholet family. The bulk of the family wealth was hers, as well as the homestead at Harbor Bar.
She was in a position therefore to aid Henry Endicott privately, were he in need—as she believed he was. The professor's awkwardness when he had called on her several evenings previous, when he had really come to offer his assistance to Lorna's father, had served to convince Miss Ida that the Endicotts were in need.
For years everybody who knew him had said that Professor Endicott was wasting his substance in experiments that would never amount to anything of a practical nature. Miss Ida herself believed that he had frittered away much time and money since resigning as a young man from the chair of experimental chemistry in a mid-New England college.
Just what had happened twenty and more years before this present date to drive the wedge between Miss Ida and Henry Endicott no member of either family knew. A match that at the time was considered eminently fitting had suddenly become impossible. That was all anybody—save the two most interested persons themselves—ever learned about it.
It was years later, when Ralph and Lorna were half grown, that Professor Endicott and Miss Ida Nicholet began to agree on one important subject. The two families should be united through Ralph and Lorna. The young people, they both said, were made for each other.