The house to which Harry Cornwall was carried after he had been thrown from his pony was in Pumpkin Delight Lane. You will perhaps think that this name is not a “real true” name of a “real true” lane, but it is, and it will lead you through many a wild, solitary place, past farm lots and salt meadows, down at last to Peconick Point; but Grandma Dobson lived at the upper end of it, nearly to the village. Her house was one of the oldest in the town. It was the loveliest brown in color, because no man’s paint had touched it. The modern improvements had not marched down Pumpkin Delight Lane, and I am sorely afraid that, had they, dear Grandma Dobson would have shut her door against them.
Grandma Dobson was grandma to the children thereabout, although she had no grandchildren of her own. Long years ago, thirty—nearly forty—she was a bright young maiden, and Charlie Dobson was a brave sailor lad. He was going on a long voyage, and he was going as ship’s master for the first time. His ship was ready to sail. So, one day they were married, and the young captain went to sea without his bride, because he did not wish to risk her life in the Snow. Snow was the name of his ship. The next voyage he was to have a new ship, and then her home should be on it. She went down to the harbor to bid him farewell. The Snow lifted her sails and sailed away—no man knew whither, and no man knoweth to-day, for the ship never was heard from any more.
The little wife lived in the old farm home, waiting, waiting—many, many years. There was one window, high up in the garret, close to the roof, where she used to sit and sew from morning until night, and wear her poor eyes dim with looking out, past a little island that lay just outside, for the Snow to come sailing into the bay. She was a dressmaker. If the dresses she made, sitting up there, could tell the story of the hopes and fears that went out and in with the stitches and the tides, how sweet, and sad, and hopeless, the history.
When the men, looking out for the nearest house to take Harry Cornwall into, after his fall from the pony, espied Grandma Dobson’s habitation, that dear old soul was at that window looking out over the bar, past the island, away across the miles of sea, thinking it just possible—at least she would look once more, it could do no harm, for the Snow.
She saw the men bearing a burden. Some one was drowned, perhaps. She went down to see, and met them at the door.
“Dear me! what’s happened?” she asked.
“A boy is hurt. May we bring him in?”
“The poor lad! Yes, indeed. Lay him right here! He isn’t dead, is he?”
She opened the window to let in the breeze coming up from the sea; and they laid Harry down, sawdust and all, on Grandma Dobson’s white coverlet.