It was cosey in Aunt Amelia’s hospitable kitchen. The dark, smiling Salim, with his magic pack, was welcome. The wares displayed—no more for purchase than for the delight of inspection—Salim stowed them away, sat himself by the fire, gave himself to ease and comfort, to the delight of a cigarette, and to the pleasure of Aunt Amelia’s genial chattering. The wind beat upon the cottage—went on, wailing, sighing, calling—and in the lulls the breaking of the sea interrupted the silence. An hour—two hours, it may be—and there was the tramp of late-comers stumbling up the hill. A loud knocking, then entered for entertainment three gigantic dripping figures—men of Catch-as-Catch-Can, bound down to Wreckers’ Cove for a doctor, but now put in for shelter, having abandoned hope of winning farther through the gale that night. Need o’ haste? Ay; but what could men do? No time t’ take a skiff t’ Wreckers’ Cove in a wind like this! ’Twould blow your hair off beyond the Tickle heads. Hard enough crossin’ the run from Hapless Harbor. An’ was there a cup o’ tea an’ a bed for the crew o’ them? They’d be under way by dawn if the wind fell. Ol’ Tom Luther had t’ have a doctor somehow, whatever come of it!
“Hello, Joe!” cried the one.
Salim rose and bowed.
“Heared tell ’t Hapless Harbor you was here-abouts.”
“Much ’bliged,” Salim responded, courteously, bowing again. “Ver’ much ’bliged.”
“Heared tell you sold a watch t’ Jim Tuft’s young one?”
“Ver’ good watch,” said Salim.
“Maybe,” was the response.
Salim blew a puff of smoke with light grace toward the white rafters. He was quite serene; he anticipated, now, a compliment, and was fashioning, of his inadequate English, a dignified sentence of acknowledgment.
“Anyhow,” drawled the man from Catch-as-Catch-Can, “she won’t go no more.”