“You must come often to see us,” said Anne.
“I wonder if you’d give that invitation if you knew how likely I’ll be to accept it,” Captain Jim remarked whimsically.
“Which is another way of saying you wonder if I mean it,” smiled Anne. “I do, 'cross my heart,’ as we used to say at school.”
“Then I’ll come. You’re likely to be pestered with me at any hour. And I’ll be proud to have you drop down and visit me now and then, too. Gin’rally I haven’t anyone to talk to but the First Mate, bless his sociable heart. He’s a mighty good listener, and has forgot more’n any MacAllister of them all ever knew, but he isn’t much of a conversationalist. You’re young and I’m old, but our souls are about the same age, I reckon. We both belong to the race that knows Joseph, as Cornelia Bryant would say.”
“The race that knows Joseph?” puzzled Anne.
“Yes. Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into two kinds—the race that knows Joseph and the race that don’t. If a person sorter sees eye to eye with you, and has pretty much the same ideas about things, and the same taste in jokes—why, then he belongs to the race that knows Joseph.”
“Oh, I understand,” exclaimed Anne, light breaking in upon her.
“It’s what I used to call—and still call in quotation marks 'kindred spirits.’”
“Jest so—jest so,” agreed Captain Jim. “We’re it, whatever IT is. When you come in tonight, Mistress Blythe, I says to myself, says I, 'Yes, she’s of the race that knows Joseph.’ And mighty glad I was, for if it wasn’t so we couldn’t have had any real satisfaction in each other’s company. The race that knows Joseph is the salt of the airth, I reckon.”
The moon had just risen when Anne and Gilbert went to the door with their guests. Four Winds Harbor was beginning to be a thing of dream and glamour and enchantment—a spellbound haven where no tempest might ever ravin. The Lombardies down the lane, tall and sombre as the priestly forms of some mystic band, were tipped with silver.