In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor—"if only the circumstances of his life had been different"—what might have been mine also!
"Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die—" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone—"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still—and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there."
"A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes.
CHAPTER VII.
LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER.
Wallencamp had its peculiar seasons. After the season of hulled corn, came the reign of baked beans. It was during this latter dispensation that my courage failed considerably.
Madeline used to remark, throwing a rare musical halo about her words: "These beans are better than they look. Ain't they, teacher?"
And I was wont to reply conscientiously enough, though with a sweetly wearied glance at the familiar dish; "Certainly, they do taste better than they look."
Occasionally we had what Harvey Dole called, "squash on the shell," an ingenious term for the last of the winter pumpkins boiled in halves, and served au naturel.