"You ain't such a dreadful sight older than I am, though," replied Mrs. Davids, reflectively.
"Not so old by two full years," returned Miss Tame, taking another smart pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did it good. "But you ain't looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose."
Mrs. Davids sighed, evasively. "We can't tell what is before us. There is more than one man in want of a wife."
As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the beach, his head a long way forward and his shambling feet trying in vain to keep up.
"Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried," continued Mrs. Davids, accepting this application to her words, "and there is Captain Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and no housekeeper at all. It would be an excellent home for you, Persis. Captain Ben always had the name of making a kind husband."
She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved man, or for the multitude of women bereft of such a husband.
By this time Captain Ben's head was at the door.
"Morning!" said he, while his feet were coming up. "Quite an accident down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ashore in the blow and broke all up into kindling-wood in less than no time. Captain Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight."
"I knowed it," sighed Mrs. Davids. "I heard a rushing sound sometime about the break of day that waked me out of a sound sleep, and I knowed then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time."
"Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night," said Captain Ben; "for as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet blankets asleep behind the life-boat house. He said he felt like he could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure enough."