"Say, Doctor, there's a mornin' meal you-all can't pay for!"
The task of getting Ethel Marion from the boat to the shore was not as difficult as Garnet had anticipated. She was buoyed up wonderfully by the thought that comfortable quarters awaited her and good clean food to satisfy an appetite that was fast becoming ravenous. Had it not been for the injured ankle, she could have walked as rapidly as either of the men from the landing stage to the house. But when she rested her full weight on it, she found that it was still painful, so that it was necessary for the Doctor to support her on one side while the Squire gallantly gave his aid on the other.
As they reached the porch, there was a stealthy sound of scurrying and the pattering of bare feet, as the young-men callers slipped away in the darkness to their homes. Then the two young women hastened forward to greet the strangers in true Core Sound style. "Ma" was in bed, they explained, but they themselves, with easy, unaffected kindness proceeded to make the invalid at home. Then one of them hurried into the cook-room to prepare a quick meal.
Ethel Marion, a girl of high society in New York City, and reared in luxury, had hitherto known little of humble homes such as this in which now she was being cared for so generously. As she glanced about her, she saw that the walls were not covered with a paper especially prepared for the purpose, in the manner to which she had been accustomed. Instead, they carried sheets of ordinary newspapers, most of them of a religious character. It was a quaint and indisputable witness to the fact that here she was in the home of a God-loving, Christian family. All of the furnishings were simple; most of them of great age. Among them were antiques to warm a collector's heart. It was plain that these had been handed down through many generations. Those of later origin were carefully wrought duplicates of the choicest models. In her astonishment amid surroundings so strange and yet so pleasant, with the savor of cooking food in her nostrils, Ethel for the moment almost forgot the mystery and the peril through which she had passed—almost forgot, for a fleeting instant, the lover she had summoned to her aid by a message cast into the sea.
CHAPTER XIV
Garnet the Hero
The dwellers of the Sound Country are early risers. For this reason, Ethel Marion was up and dressed next morning earlier than ever before in her life. The dawn was just breaking when breakfast was announced. One of the buxom girls came to offer her services in dressing the invalid stranger. Then she was assisted to the porch for a breath of the early morning air, and she exclaimed in delight over the splendid view there unfolded. Far off to the eastward the sun was just climbing up from behind a sand dune on the Banks. For miles up and down the coast the broken sand hills ran in a line north and south, trending the horizon. These showed free from any vegetation except the scrub growth at their base and the sand of them shone under the rays of the rising sun like molten silver. In the foreground were the blue waters of the Sound now dimpling under the caressing touches of a gentle breeze. Here and there showed high lights from the whitecaps that stood out as souvenirs still of the storm that had passed. Off to the right of the small bay upon which the house was built, a tangled mass of evergreen shrubs offered a vivid note in the color scheme. These were the undergrowth of the huge forest trees, of which the limbs were almost hidden by the clinging wreaths of mistletoe.
The esthetic sense of Ethel was touched to the deeps by this vista of beauty round-about. No wonder that the dwellers in this blessed region lived contented in youth, maturity, and old age. She wondered, rather, that anyone could be cross or ill tempered or evil in any way within the environment of a nature so benign.
She was reluctant when Miss Goodwin gently led her away from the panorama of beauty toward the more sordid pleasure of the breakfast table. As she went, Ethel offered a silent and most devout prayer of gratitude for her preservation and for the kindness she had received from Doctor Garnet and these strangers, whom just now she was very near to loving.