"Well, if she does, it's her business, that's all I've got to say," said the older woman, dangerously. "Jane Vail never ran after anybody yet and I don't believe she's going to begin now. He says—and she says—she's doing some special work, and I suppose maybe he's advising her about it."
"I've never understood before that Mr. Daragh was a literary authority," said the Settlement worker in her little, smothered voice.
"Well, I'm free to say it beats me. But all I know is, Jane Vail's nobody's fool."
And Michael Daragh, meanwhile, read his letters in his room, monklike in its simplicity, three times, and then he tore them up, quickly, the line of his lean jaw salient. The second one to come had been dated at six in the morning, on the wharf at Bath, and ran—
I'm shivering, Michael Daragh,—shivering in September! The incredible freshness of this morning, the bracing miracle of cold! I left Boston on the night boat and the stewardess rapped me firmly up at three-thirty to see the sun rise. I stayed stubbornly in my berth, at first, but presently a length of Quaker gray sky interlined with faintest rose brought me to my elbow and then to the window. The little steamer was feeling her cautious way up a river of dull silver between banks of taupe and mauve. After a moment I could pick up objects here and there in somber silhouette—a windmill, a battered barn, crude landings reaching out to graze the boat. In that tremulous moment before the break of day, shore and stream and sky melted and ran together in the liquid pattern of an abalone shell. Then, suddenly, the sun shot up over the rim of the world, "out of the gates of the day," a clear persimmon, gorgeous as a Chinese lantern, and the realm of faery warmed into reality,—river and river banks, houses and little hummocky hills.
I must walk now to keep warm. There is a young old woman in shabby corduroy footing it briskly to and fro, who may be going to take my toy steamer,—tossing a mane of smoke and champing its bit at the upper wharf—and I'm going to speak to her.
7 A.M. Going up the River.
She was taking the down boat, but she gave her valuable experience to me. She asked me for which island I was heading, and when I said I didn't know,—that I meant to line them up and say,—"My-mother-told-me-to-take-this,—" she said,—"Oh, then do take Three Meadows!" She has been there all summer, and she thinks I can board at the same place—with Angelique Larideau Gillespie, "Mis' Deac'n Gillespie." She is Canadian-French and the only woman on the island who can cook any other way than frying. The bad little hotel is closing. She was so merry and footloose and free, Michael! That's exactly the sort of old maid I mean to be——
"Love of roving foot and joy of roving eye——"
We have been wriggling up a cunning little river, bumping into clumsy landings here and there and now the porter-purser-steward- newsagent-cabin-boy-and-guide says the next one is mine.