"Yes."
She would give her mind to the oysters, he knew. It had been her way to put a little of her brains and blood into all her jobs in life, finishing each with a self-satisfied little nod. No wonder that she was worn, now that she was a middle-aged woman.
"She's lost something, Lotty has since I knew her," he thought, watching the light figure in its dark blue dress moving about; "but she's the right stuff for home use,"—with some vague idea in his old salt-water brain of delicate, incomplete faces suiting best with moonlight and country strolls, and of the sparkle of dinner-lights and brilliant eyes agreeing together, but that a face like Charlotte's was the one for the breakfast-table. The shrewd, kindly eyes, the color on her face, and the laugh came on you as fresh as a child's,—if her hair was a bit gray.
She had gone to the bay-window that overlooked the stretch of coast on which the heavy winter tide was coming in, and grown silent watching it. The Captain called to her; he wanted nothing to put the breakfast back this morning. And he fancied that to a woman who had been a leader in the world of culture and refinement yonder this sky and loud foreboding surf might have some meaning of which he knew nothing.
"Nature's voices, eh?" coming to her side.
Some expression that had held her face suddenly escaped it.
"I am watching for Jerome. Yonder he comes with your fisherman, by the inlet,"—pointing to two dark figures in the mist crossing the sands below.
The house stood on a ledge, facing the sea: ramparts of rock, gray and threatening in this light, running down on either side, and shutting out all outlook but that of the dull, obstinate stretch of sand on which the sea had beaten and fallen back for centuries, with the same baffled, melancholy cry. Behind the house were clumps of pines and cedars. Nature had done all she could in wringing out whatever green and lusty life was left in rocks and sand to make the place home-like and cheerful. Beside the trees, there was a patch of kitchen-garden back of the house, a grape-vine or two on the walls, trailing moss hanging to its eaves,—the delicate web-like moss that grows along this coast out of dead wood; even the beach rocks glowed into colors,—dark browns, purples, and reds.
But for all these it needed summer and sunshine. On this, the day before Christmas, the house and the land about it were smothered in a cold mist: only the shivering sea beyond had voice or motion.
"It's a dull, uncanny place, Mrs. Jacobus," said Lufflin, anxiously. "It looks like a prison to me to-day. What if we've made a mistake?"