There was not really much she could see, for the lane turned at Mrs. Ephraim Calkins’ house and beyond her house a hillock of sand rose steeply to an azure blue sky. But Aunt Achsa’s riotous flowers were smiling their brightest, at the opening of the hedge crouched Nip and Tuck regarding the morning with dignified satisfaction, over everything shone the alluring sun.
A sudden whiff of tobacco caught Sidney’s attention. At the same moment the boarder emerged from the back of the house and walked slowly along the clam-shell path that skirted the bit of garden. He was evidently deep in thought. Suddenly he bent and picked a flower. As he straightened his glance interrupted Sidney’s curious speculations.
“Good morning, little half-cousin.”
“Good morning,” Sidney answered, quite cheerfully, thinking as she spoke that he was nicer looking in the garden than he had seemed in Cousin Achsa’s kitchen the night before. “Is it early or late and is it your pipe that smells so good?”
“It’s early. Aunt Achsa has gone on an errand, for I assured her that you would probably sleep until noon. You see I’d forgotten that you are—fifteen, did you say? And that smell—well, it may be the good Atlantic, or Lav’s basket of fish, which is not likely. My best bet is that it’s breakfast over at the Calkins’. I have an idea. I’ll finish this pipe while you dress, then we’ll run down and meet Aunt Achsa and incidentally I’ll give you your first glimpse of the harbor. What say?”
Sidney indicated her willingness by drawing her head in from the frame of roses. She dressed with haste, splashing the cold water from the bowl over her face and scarcely disturbing the two braids of hair. In a few moments she joined the “boarder” in the garden, rousing him from a frowning contemplation of the little flower he had picked. At her “I’m ready” he put it into the pocket of his coat.
Unlike Sidney, Dugald Allan had not slept the night before. Argue as he would he could not shake the notion that he was responsible for Sidney’s coming. Because the idea had seemed to please Aunt Achsa he had encouraged her to invite the girl; to further humor her he himself had written the letter that he knew must have given Sidney’s family a wrong impression of conditions at Aunt Achsa’s. Its very tone had been unwittingly misleading He had not thought of that until he had caught the stricken look on Sidney’s face the night before, observed her involuntary shrinking from the intimacy of the supper table.
Poor Aunt Achsa, it had been rather a ghastly supper in spite of all her efforts and her expectations: Lavender had huddled in his chair with his great soft eyes on Sidney; Sidney had been too frightened to eat or to answer by more than a monosyllable Aunt Achsa’s eager questions; poor Aunt Achsa, in an agony of shyness and concern had fluttered over them all. It had been a relief when Sidney, pleading weariness from her long journey, took her candle from Aunt Achsa and went to bed. And later Allan could have sworn he heard the sound of sobbing from behind that closed door.
The whole thing had bothered him and kept him awake, thinking. And it was not alone Sidney’s disappointment that moved him. He was stirred by a strong desire to make the girl know Aunt Achsa as he knew her, to love the noble spirit in the weather-beaten old body. Even Lavender. These people might indeed be his own so quickly did he rise in their defense. “Well, they are my own!” he muttered. If this Sidney had been like the other fifteen-year-old girls who had crossed his path he would not have bothered, for they could not have been taught by any process to recognize the gold from the dross; but she seemed different. And he had caught the impression that she had come all this way for something that she had wanted very much to find. Her disappointment had bordered on the tragic. Well, it was no business of his, but he’d make amends by laying off work for a few days and playing around with her and Lavender.
He was a little taken aback when Sidney, clad in a middy and pleated skirt, for Trude’s last injunction had been to brush and hang away the new suit in which she had traveled, joined him, no trace of last night’s woe on her face. With Nip and Tuck following they tramped through the sand between the hollyhocks. Where the lane turned into the beach road Sidney stopped with a quick, delighted intake of breath. “Oh, the boats! Aren’t they darling? I never saw so many. Why, the sails look all pinky!”