VESTY OF THE BASINS
I
THE MEETIN'
Now is it to be rain or a storm of wind at the Basin?
I love that foam out on the sea; those boulders, black and wet along the shore, they are a rest to me; the clouds chase one another; in this dim north country the wind is cool and strong, though it is now midsummer; at sunset you shall see such color!
From a little, low, storm-beaten building comes the sound of a fog-horn. That is the gift of Melchias Tibbitts, deceased, to the Basin school-house. Yonder is his schooner, the "Martha B. Fuller," long stranded, leaning seaward, down there in the cove.
It is Sunday afternoon; the fog-horn that Melchias Tibbitts gave—it serves as bell; the battered schoolhouse as church; and for Sunday raiment? some little reverent, aspiring compromise of an unwonted white collar, stretched stiff and holy and uncomfortable about the stalwart neck above a blue flannel shirt, or a new pair of rubber boots—the trousers much tucked in—worn with an air of conscious, deprecating pride.
But the women will be fine. God only knows how! but be sure, in some pitiful, sweet way they will be fine.