I never saw her drive past without thinking how she hated to look at the sea. She never sat where she could see salt water. She had been going out to Black Bar all these years and never once had seen the boat-drill. This was because she knew, on account of her husband's being a life-saver, what the sea does to the vessels and the men in them.
When Mis' MacFarland's married daughter died and her little granddaughter Moira came to live with her, I would see all of them, the Captain, Mis' MacFarland and Moira, driving to the station summer evenings, Moira's head peeping out between them like a little bird. And I would always think how Mis' MacFarland hated the sea, and I'd be real glad that the blowing of the sand grinds the station windows white till you can't see through them.
Then John MacFarland died all of a sudden just at the end of the summer. He had been building a yawl out there at the station for nearly two years, and she was just ready to la'nch. I remember meeting him on the boardwalk and him telling me about that boat of his, and thinking what a fine figure of a man he was for over sixty. And next I heard he was dead.
Then Mis' MacFarland had a spell of sickness, and that is how I came to be housekeeper to her and Moira. And I remember how she struck me the first day, for there she was sitting looking out over the bay watching the boats as though the sight of them gave her pleasure. I was so surprised I spoke right out:
"Why, Mis' MacFarland," says I, "I thought you couldn't abide the look of salt water."
"I don't seem to feel there's the difference between land and sea I used to," she says in her gentle, smiling way. "We learn."
I wanted to ask her how we learned what I saw she'd learned, for, if you can understand me, she seemed to have gotten beyond grief, but before I could speak Moira came running in and it seemed as if the joy in her heart shone out of her so the place was all lighted up. Her face was tanned so brown that her blue eyes looked strange, and against her skin the fair hair around her forehead looked almost silver.
"Where you been," I said, "to have so much fun?"
"In the back country," says she. "I'm always happy when I come from in back."
"Were you alone?" She stopped a minute before she answered.