The next morning Mrs. Barnes, over at the village on a marketing expedition, met Captain Bangs on his way to the postoffice.
“Oh, Cap'n,” she said, “I've got somethin' to tell you. 'Tain't bad news this time; it's good. Mr. Heman Daniels has changed his mind. He's goin' to keep his room and board with me just as he's been doin'. Isn't that splendid!”
The sewing circles and the club and the noon and evening groups at the postoffice had two new subjects for verbal dissection during the next fortnight. This was, in its way, a sort of special Providence, for this was the dull season, when there were no more wrecks alongshore or schooners aground on the bars, and the boarders and cottagers from the cities had not yet come to East Wellmouth. Also the opening of the High Cliff House was getting to be a worn-out topic. So Emily Howes, her appearance and behavior, and John Kendrick, HIS behavior and his astonishing recklessness in attempting to wrest a portion of the county law practice from Heman Daniels, were welcomed as dispensations and discussed with gusto.
Emily came through the gossip mill ground fine, but with surprisingly little chaff. She was “pretty as a picture,” all the males agreed upon that point. And even the females admitted that she was “kind of good-lookin',” although Hannah Parker's diagnosis that she was “declined to be consumptic” and Mrs. Larkin's that she was older than she “made out to be,” had some adherents. All agreed, however, that she knew how to run a boarding-house and that she was destined to be the “salvation” of Thankful Barnes' venture at the Cap'n Abner place.
Certainly she did prove herself to possess marked ability as a business manager. Quietly, and without undue assertion, she reorganized the affairs of the High Cliff House. No one detected any difference in the quality of the meals served there, in their variety or ample sufficiency. But, little by little, she took upon herself the buying of supplies, the regulation of accounts, the prompt payment of bills and the equally prompt collection of board and room rent. Thankful found the cares upon her shoulders less and less heavy, and she was more free to do what she was so capable of doing, that is, superintend the cooking and the housekeeping.
But Thankful herself was puzzled.
“I don't understand it,” she said. “I've always had to look out for myself, and others, too. There ain't been a minute since I can remember that I ain't had somebody dependent upon me. I cal'lated I could run a boardin'-house if I couldn't do anything else. But I'm just as sure as I am that I'm alive that if you hadn't come when you did I'd have run this one into the ground and myself into the poorhouse. I don't understand it.”
Emily smiled and put her arm about her cousin's waist. “Oh, no, you wouldn't, Auntie,” she said. “It wasn't as bad as that. You needed help, that was all. And you are too generous and kind-hearted. You were always fearful that your boarders might not be satisfied. I have been teaching bookkeeping and accounting, you see, and, besides, I have lived in a family where the principal struggle was to satisfy the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker. This is real fun compared to that.”
Thankful shook her head.
“I know,” she said; “you always talk that way, Emily. But I'm afraid you'll make yourself sick. You come down here purpose for your health, you know.”