“This is very strange!” said Lucy, thoughtfully. “But I suppose I had better take them home. They must have been washed up from the sea and caught to my gown some way. How pretty they are! I wonder if they belonged to some one who is drowned?”
She put the necklace into her pocket, and turned to go home. She had gone but a little way when she met Job Chippit.
“Uncle Job,” she said, “I have found something on the sand. Do you think any one in town has lost it, or that it was washed up by the sea?”
Job examined closely the emerald necklace. “This never belonged to anyone in our town, Lucy,” he said; “most likely the tide washed it up in the last storm. Yours it is by all right if no one comes to claim it; and be keerful of it, for I expect it’s awful valuable. But what’s happened to you?”
“You’ve got an odd look about you, some way, but I never see you look so pretty. Has anything happened?”
“No,” said Lucy, quietly, “only I sat down to rest and fell asleep, and had a very strange dream. Good-night, Uncle Job.” From that evening Goody Cobb was never seen in Salem town.
Job Chippit continued his walk, thoughtfully whittling a little stick. Before long he overtook Master Isaac Torrey, who was walking along the shore with his head down, seeming to notice nothing but the sand at his feet. Master Torrey had quite left off his wild ways. He made no more foolish, fanciful speeches about nymphs and goddesses, and such nonsense. “Anna Jane had made a sensible man of him,” said his father-in-law. “He was greatly improved,” said every one, with the exception of Ichabod Sterns and Job Chippit.
Master Torrey had avoided the wood-carver since his marriage. His father-in-law thought it a good sign. “He had been quite too familiar with that person,” thought the colonel. But this night Master Torrey did not avoid him, though he only nodded without speaking in answer to Job’s “Good-evening,” and then the two walked on in silence.
“That’s an odd-looking thing on the beach,” said Job at last.