CHAPTER XII[ToC]
Fisherman's Cove was a long way from Mrs. Stump's boarding-house, but that fact gave Sally no concern. And Fisherman's Cove was much changed from the Cove that Uncle John used to tell her about, where he had been used to go to see the men haul the seines. Its waters had been fouled by the outpourings of a sewer, and the fish had deserted them years before; but that would not make the ice any the less attractive with a young moon shining upon it.
And the way to Fisherman's Cove was not the way that Uncle John had been in the habit of taking. His way, fifty years before, had led him out upon a quiet country road until he came to a little lane that led down, between high growths of bushes, to a little farmhouse. The farmhouse had overlooked the Cove. Sally could not go through the little lane to the little old farmhouse, because the farmhouse was not there now, and because there was a horrible fence of new boards right across the lane. They had been building mills on the shores of Fisherman's Cove for thirty years; and the ice ponds on which the boys and girls of thirty years before used to skate—Miss Patty had skated there, often—were no longer ice ponds, but thriving mill villages, with their long rows of brilliantly lighted windows and their neat tenements, the later ones of three stories, each story having its neat clothes-porch. If you don't know what a clothes-porch is, just go down there and see for yourself. And these neat tenements of three stories each sheltered I don't know how many families of Portuguese mill-workers, who may have been neat, but who probably were not. Thriving! Ugh! as Miss Patty invariably said, turning her head away. She did not have to go that way often, but when she did have to she preferred to shut her eyes until her horse had taken her past it all.
Besides, Mrs. Stump's was not on Apple Tree Street, but in a much less fashionable neighborhood; one which had been fashionable some seventy or eighty years before. As fashion left that street and moved upon the ridge, the fine old houses—for they were fine old houses, even there—gradually fell in their estate. The way from Mrs. Stump's to Fisherman's Cove did not lie by that thriving mill village which has been mentioned, but by other thriving mill villages, with their tenements which, being older, were presumably not so neat. There was little to choose between the ways. Either was disagreeable enough, especially at any time when the hands were in the street, and no girl would have chosen such a time to walk upon that road. Even Sally would have avoided it; but the mill-hands were now shut up in their mills and working merrily or otherwise, and she did not give the matter a thought.
As she started upon her road, a man who had been leaning negligently upon a post at the next corner, bestirred himself, unleaned, and came toward her. Sally glanced up at him and stopped. "Oh, dear!" she said, in a voice of comical dismay. "Oh, dear! And I promised mother that I wouldn't do anything rash."
The man continued to come toward her. He had a leisurely air of certainty which ordinarily would have antagonized Sally at once.
"Well, Sally?" he said questioningly, when he was near enough to be heard without raising his voice.
"Well, Everett," Sally returned, with some sharpness. "I should really like to know what you were doing on that corner."
"Doing?" he asked in surprise. "Why, nothing at all. I was only waiting for you."
"And why," she said, with more sharpness than before, "if you were waiting for me, didn't you come to the house and wait there?"