Flint: His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes

by Maud Wilder Goodwin

FLYING POINT

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"We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more."

Far up the pond, at no great distance from the spot where "The Aquidneck" had met her untimely and ignominious end, Flying Point thrust out its tongue of land into the rippling water, which stole in and out between its tiny coves so gently that scarcely a murmur could be heard, except when a northeaster lashed the pond into a mimic sea; and then the teapot tempest was so outdone by the giant waves outside the bar, that it passed unnoticed, like the fury of a child beside the rage of a grown man.

The Point took its name from the flights of ducks which passed over it in vast numbers in the spring and autumn, their dark, irregular squadrons black against the intense blue of sea and sky. Its low bluff of gleaming sand was crowned by a grove of tall pines, through which purled a tiny brook perpetually prattling to the sea of its little inland life. Below the bank, stretched out a rod or more of level beach [Pg 155] where fires might be lighted and cloths spread by those who wished to return to the gypsy habits of their forebears and sit down as Nature's guests, to simple fare of their own cooking and serving.

A midsummer pilgrimage to Flying Point was a regular feature of the season with the dwellers at the White-House; and it was a point of honor for the old-timers to declare that last year's expedition was in every way more successful than that of the present season. Newcomers endured this superiority in silence, consoled by the prospect of enjoying the same triumph themselves next summer.

Several times the date of this year's expedition had been set, and as often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July; but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the calm of existence at Nepaug.

On the second day after the wreck, Angus Costello and his sister took their departure for New York,—he to collect the insurance on the ill-fated "Mary Ann," she to report again for duty in the Army. With the going of the Costellos, quiet settled down once more; but the dwellers on the Point found themselves impatient [Pg 156] of the very repose for which they had sought Nepaug. Rest had turned to inanimation, quiet to dulness, peace to stagnation.

Flint, usually unaffected by environment, found himself incapable of any intellectual or physical exertion. He could not work. He could not even loaf alone. Brady was an indifferent companion, subject to fits of absence of mind,—more unsocial than absence of body.

There was only one resource left; the young men betook themselves to the White-House. Life there could not be wholly dull, while a perpetual sparring match was going on between Miss Standish and Dr. Cricket, while Professor Anstice smoked his pipe serenely on the corner of the piazza, and Ben Bradford openly adored Winifred, heedless of outside observation or amusement.