I could and I was very glad of the opportunity. I turned to take Miss Colton in my arms, but she avoided me.
“Here I am, Mr. Atwood,” she said. “Oh, thank you.”
She was swung into the air and moved shoreward to the accompaniment of mighty splashings.
“Don't be scart, ma'am,” said Mr. Atwood. “I shan't let ye drop. Lord sakes! I've toted more women in my time than you can shake a stick at. There's more da—that is, there's more summer folks try to land on this island at low tide than there is moskeeters and there's more of them than there's fiddles in—Hi! come on, you, Mr. What's-your-name! Straight as you go.”
I came on wading through eelgrass and water until I reached a sandy beach. A moment later we stood before a white door in a very white little house. Mr. Atwood opened the door, revealing a cosy little sitting room and a gray-haired, plump, pleasant-faced woman sitting in a rocking chair beside a table with a lamp upon it.
“Hello, Betsy!” bellowed our rescuer, stamping his wet rubber boots on the braided mat. “Got company come to supper—or breakfast, or whatever you want to call it. This is Mr. Paine from Denboro. This is his wife, Mrs. Paine. They've been cruisin' all the way from Cape Cod to Kamchatky in a motor boat with no power to it. Don't that beat the Old Scratch, hey?”
The plump woman rose, without a trace of surprise, as if having company drop in at three o'clock in the morning was nothing out of the ordinary, and came over to us, beaming with smiles.
“I'm real glad to see you, Mrs. Paine,” she exclaimed. “And your husband, too. You must be froze to death! Set right down while I fix up a room for you and hunt up some dry things for you to put on. I won't be but a minute.”
Before I could offer explanations, or do more than stammer thanks, and rather incoherent ones at that, she had bustled out of the room. I caught one glimpse of Mabel Colton's face; it was crimson from neck to brow. “Mrs. Paine!” “Your husband!” I was grateful to the doughty Mr. Atwood, but just then I should have enjoyed choking him.
The light keeper, quite unaware that his unfortunate misapprehension of the relationship between his guests might be embarrassing, was doing his best to make us feel at home.