"For love's sake, Tobias, she never spoke as though she'd feel jealous any if Ralph Endicott had forty girls! I should say not! She did mention that Ralph had some love affair when he was at school. But she called it puppy love," concluded Miss Heppy, with a sniff.
"Humph! Sort o' scorned it, did she? It didn't seem to worry her none?"
"Worry her? I should say not! But I guess 'twas only gossip at that. I don't believe Ralph Endicott is the sort of a boy to play fast and loose with any girl."
"Does seem as though we feel about alike on that score, Heppy," reflected her brother. "Ralph, it strikes me, is purt' sound timber. But I wonder, now, where Lorna Nicholet got her information about Ralph's chasing around after that chorus gal? Does seem as though such a story might be one o' the things that makes Lorna so determined to cut Ralph adrift. Oh, sugar!"
But these final reflections of the lightkeeper were inaudible. He had by no means lost interest in his matchmaking intrigue regarding the two young people who he was convinced were "jest about made for each other."
His scheme—if scheme he had—had been in abeyance all these weeks. Now that the families of the young people were about to take up their residence on the Clay Head, he proposed to enter upon a more active campaign for what he believed to be the happiness of all concerned.
Not alone was Miss Heppy aware of the long-past bond of affection between Miss Ida Nicholet and Ralph's Uncle Henry. Tobias Bassett had been just as observant as his sister—or anybody else.
Like others, he had wondered twenty years before why the then young Professor Endicott had not pursued with more vigor the charming, if independent, Ida Nicholet, and made her his bride. There was a romance nipped in the bud which Tobias always felt he might have mended—"if he'd put his mind to it."
In any case he determined not to see the ship of Ralph and Lorna's happiness cast on the rocks if he could help it. He felt that it might be within his power to avert such disaster. The strategic yeast of the true matchmaker began to stir within him.
"Miss Ida," as everybody called Lorna's assertive aunt, could not be long in any place without making her presence felt. Her original and independent character never failed to make its impress upon all domestic, as well as other, affairs. The Nicholet ménage was run like clockwork. Miss Ida was the clock. Everything at the big house on Clay Head was soon working smoothly, and Miss Ida could look about.