She wished she dared ask Miss Letty how old King really was but she did not think it polite anymore than if she asked Miss Letty how old she was. King was not handsome, he was bony like his mistress, but he certainly understood everything. Miss Letty said he knew they were going to Elizy Davies’ by the way he loped ahead; King, too, had a strong liking for Elizy Davies’ gingerbread.
“She feeds it to him in great hunks. And he won’t eat anyone else’s gingerbread, either. Scornful as you please even when I offer him some. Now I say that’s discriminating for a horse. I suppose it’s what folks call horse-sense.”
Sidney did not know which she liked better, watching the gleaming marshes through which the highway wound or listening to Miss Letty’s spasmodic conversation. Miss Letty pointed out old landmarks to Sidney, then told her something of the school at Truro to which she and Elizy Davies had gone, then of the little girls to whom she was about to give music lessons. She had taught their mothers. Then she lapsed into a deep silence broken only by an occasional “cl-lk” to King which she made with her tongue against her teeth and to which King paid no attention except for a flick of his right ear.
Sidney, looking down at the great bony hands limply holding the reins, thought it very funny to picture them on the keyboard of a piano. If she had spoken her thoughts aloud Miss Letty would have told her, quite calmly, that she couldn’t play a note now, but that she knew when notes were played right and she could still rap lagging fingers smartly across the knuckles. Folks would have her, anyway. Sidney did not know, of course, that Miss Letty was a tradition and that Cape Cod clings to its traditions.
“You’ll think Phin Davies’ house the queerest thing you ever saw. It isn’t a house nor is it a boat; it’s as much one as t’other and not anything, I’d say, but what two crazy men getting their heads together rigged up. Cap’n Davies said as long as he had to live ashore he wanted his house to look like a boat, he didn’t care what folks said, and he hunted the Cape over to find a builder who wouldn’t apply to have him locked up in an asylum, straight off. He got a man from Falmouth, who’d been a master once on a trader and sort of knew how Phin Davies felt. But there was Elizy carrying on awful about it and saying she’d always looked forward to the time when she could have a nice house—and there the two of them were. And the house is as ’tis. Phin has the front of it that’s as like the bow of a ship without any rigging as they could make it, and Elizy has the back that’s got as up-to-date a kitchen as any on Cape Cod.”
A winding road, all sweet with wild primroses led up to the queer house on the eminence. Sure enough, there was the front part like the forward hull of a ship, deck-houses and all; and the back like any sensible New England home. Sidney giggled delightedly.
“But there aren’t two finer people on this Cape!” declared Miss Letty. “And there’s Phin coming to meet us. Reckon he spied King through his glasses along beyond Wellfleet.”
Cap’n Phin Davies was overjoyed to see Sidney. “Why, it’s the little gal I found on the train!” he repeated over and over. “Elizy,” he called lustily toward the kitchen door, “come and see! It’s the little gal I told you ’bout that I found on the train.”
Elizy Davies came hurrying from the kitchen door. She was lean to gauntness and tall and wore round, steel-rimmed glasses low on the sharp bridge of her nose. Sidney immediately understood how she had been able to hold out for her half of the house. But she greeted Sidney with kindly interest and Miss Letty with real affection.
“I thought you’d be over this way today. Anne Matthews said Maida was going to have a lesson. Got my gingerbread all mixed.”