Sears and Judah saw them look at each other. The man raised his hat and said something which they could not hear. Then Miss Snowden cried "Oh!" She seemed intensely surprised and, for her, a good deal flustered. There was more low-toned conversation. Then Elvira and the stranger turned and walked back up the path toward the house. He escorted her in a manner and with a manner which made that walk a sort of royal progress.
"Who was that?" asked Sears, as much of himself as of Judah.
But Mr. Cahoon had, by this time, settled the question to his own satisfaction.
"It's one of them slick critters peddlin' lightnin' rods," he declared, with conviction. "When you sight somebody that looks like a cross between a minister and one of them stuffed dummies they have outside of the stores in Dock Square to show off clothes on, then you can 'most generally bet he's peddlin' lightnin' rods. Either that or paintin' signs on fences about 'Mustang Liniment' or 'Vegetine' or somethin'. Why, a feller like that hove alongside me over in our yard one time—'twas afore you come, Cap'n Sears—and I give you my word, the way he was togged up I thought——"
The captain did not wait to hear the Cahoon thought. He walked away. In a few minutes he had forgotten the stranger, having other and more important matters on his mind. There was a question concerning the Fair Harbor cooking range which was perplexing him just at this time. It looked as if they might have to buy a new one, and Sears, as superintendent of finances, hated to spend the money that month.
He limped up the slope and along the path to the side door. And when he entered that door he became aware that something unusual was going on. The atmosphere of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women was, so to speak, electrified, it was vibrant with excitement and mystery.
There was no one in the dining room, and no one in the sitting room. Yet in each of these apartments were numerous evidences that people had been there very recently and left in a great hurry. A cloth partially laid and left hanging. Drawers of the buffet left open. A broom lying directly in the middle of the floor where it had been dropped. An upset work-basket, disgorging spools, needle packets, and an avalanche of stockings awaiting darning. A lamp with the chimney standing beside it on the table. These were some of the signs denoting sudden and important interruption of a busy forenoon.
Captain Sears, wondering much, turned from the sitting room into the hall leading to the parlor. Then he became aware that, ahead of him, was the center and core of excitement. From the parlor came a murmur of voices, exclamations, giggles—the sounds as of a party, a meeting of the sewing-circle, or a reception. He could not imagine what it was all about.
He reached the parlor door and stood there for an instant looking in. Every inmate of the Harbor was in that room, including Elizabeth and her mother and even Caroline Snow, who, because it was Monday, was there to help with the washing. And every one—or almost every one—was talking, and the majority were crowded about one spot, a spot where stood a man, a man whom Sears recognized as the stranger he had seen in the garden.
And then Mrs. Berry, who happened to be facing the door, saw him. She broke through the ring of women and hurried over. Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining, there were bright spots in her cheeks, and, altogether, she looked younger and handsomer than the captain had ever seen her, more as he would have imagined she must have looked in the days when Cap'n Ike came South a-courting.