But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: “Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider—” and the spell was gone.
One day she exclaimed: “Oh!” and Latimer patiently lowered the “Oxford Book of Verse,” and asked: “What is it, NOW?”
“I'm so sorry,” Helen said, “but I can't help watching that Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday—”
“I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy,” said Latimer, “or in what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning man myself!”
Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. “Men get over THAT kind of drowning,” she said.
“Not THIS kind of man doesn't!” said Latimer. “And don't tell me,” he cried indignantly, “that that's ANOTHER thing they all say.”
“If one could only be sure!” sighed Helen. “If one could only be sure that you—that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that, it would help you a lot in making up your mind.”
“There is only one way to find that out,” said Latimer; “that is to marry him. I mean, of course,” he corrected hastily, “to marry me.”
One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar and smiling happily.
“He has a friendly smile,” said Helen; “I think he likes us.”