LITMIR.BIZ

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that mysterious, intangible power known as the “government.”

      The superintendent generally stopped in at the captain’s if the morning were stormy; it was nearer his lodgings than the farmhouse where he took his meals—and then breakfast at the captain’s cost nothing. He had come in on this particular day ostensibly to protest about the sloop’s having gone to the Ledge without a notification to him. He had begun by saying, with much bluster, that he didn’t know about the one stone that Caleb West was “reported” to have set; that nothing would be accepted unless he was satisfied, and nothing paid for by the department without his signature. But he ended in great good humor when the captain invited him to breakfast and placed him at his own right hand. Carleton liked little distinctions when made in his favor; he considered them due to his position.

      The superintendent was a type of his class. His appointment at Shark Ledge Light had been secured through the efforts of a brother-in-law who was a custom-house inspector. Before his arrival at Keyport he had never seen a stone laid or a batch of concrete mixed. To this ignorance of the ordinary methods of construction was added an overpowering sense of his own importance coupled with the knowledge that the withholding of a certificate—the superintendent could choose his own time for giving it—might embarrass everybody connected with the work. He was not dishonest, however, and had no faults more serious than those of ignorance, self-importance, and conceit. This last broke out in his person: he wore a dyed mustache, a yellow diamond shirt-pin, and on Sundays patent leather shoes one size too small.

      Captain Joe understood the superintendent thoroughly. “Ain’t it cur’us,” he would sometimes say, “that a man’s old’s him is willin’ ter set round all day knowin’ he don’t know nothin’, never larnin’, an’ yit allus afeard some un’ll find it out?” Then, as the helplessness of the man rose in his mind, he would add, “Well, poor critter, somebody’s got ter support him; guess the guv’ment’s th’ best paymaster fur him.”

      When breakfast was over, the skipper of the Screamer dropped in to make his first visit, shaking the water from his oilskins as he entered.

      “Pleased to meet yer, Mis’ Bell,” he said in his bluff, wholesome way, acknowledging the captain’s introduction to Mrs. Bell, then casting his eyes about for a seat, and finally taking an edge of a window-sill among the sou’westers.

      “Give me your hat an’ coat, and do have breakfast, Captain Brandt,” said Mrs. Bell in a tone as hearty as if it were the first meal she had served that day.

      “No, thank ye, I had some ’board sloop,” replied Captain Brandt.

      “Here, cap’n, take my seat,” said Captain Joe. “I’m goin’ out ter see how the weather looks.” He picked up the first hat he came to,—as was his custom,—and disappeared through the open door, followed by nearly all the seafaring men in the room.

      As the men passed out, each one reached for his hat and oilskins hanging behind the wooden door, and waddling out stood huddled together in the driving rain like yellow penguins, their eyes turned skyward.

      Each man diagnosed the weather for himself. Six doctors over a patient with a hidden disease are never so impressive nor so obstinate as six seafaring men over a probable change of wind. The drift of the cloud-rack scudding in from the sea, the clearness of the air, the current of the upper clouds, were each silently considered. No opinions were given. It was for Captain Joe to say what he thought of the weather. Breaking clouds meant one kind of work for them,—fitting derricks, perhaps,—a continued storm meant another.

      If the captain arrived at any conclusion, it was not expressed. He had walked down to the gate and leaned over the palings, looking up at the sky across the harbor, and then behind him toward the west. The rain trickled unheeded down the borrowed sou’wester and fell upon his blue flannel shirt. He looked up and down the road at the passers-by tramping along in the wet: the twice-a-day postman, wearing an old army coat and black rubber cape; the little children crowding together under one umbrella, only the child in the middle keeping dry; and the butcher in the meat wagon with its white canvas cover and swinging scales. Suddenly he gave a quick cry, swung back the gate with the gesture of a rollicking boy, and threw both arms wide open in a mock attempt to catch a young girl who sprang past him and dashed up the broad walk with a merry ringing laugh that brought every one to the outer door.

      “Well, if I live!” exclaimed Mrs. Bell. “Mary Peebles, you jes’ come here an’ see Betty West. Ain’t you got no better sense, Betty, than to come down in all this soakin’ rain? Caleb’ll be dreadful mad, an’ I don’t blame him a mite. Come right in this minute and take that shawl off.”

      “I ain’t wet a bit, Aunty Bell,” laughed Betty, entering the room. “I got Caleb’s high rubber boots on. Look at ’em. Ain’t they big!” showing the great soles with all the animation of a child. “An’ this shawl don’t let no water through nowhere. Oh, but didn’t it blow round my porch las’ night!” Then turning to the captain, who had followed close behind, “I think you’re real mean, Cap’n Joe, to keep Caleb out all night on the Ledge. I was that dead lonely I could’er cried. Oh, is Mr. Sanford here?” she asked quickly, and with a little shaded tone of deference in her voice, as she caught sight of him in the next room. “I thought he’d gone to New York. How do you do, Mr. Sanford?” with another laugh and a nod of her head, which Sanford as kindly returned.

      “We come purty nigh leavin’ everybody on the Ledge las’ night, Betty, an’ the sloop too,” said Captain Joe, “cutting” his eye at the skipper as he spoke. Then in a more serious tone, “I lef’ Caleb a-purpose, child. We got some stavin’ big derricks to set, an’ Mr. Sanford wants ’em up week arter next, an’ there ain’t nobody kin fix the anchor sockets but me an’ Caleb. He’s at work on ’em now, an’ I had to come back to git th’ bands on ’em. He’ll be home for Sunday, little gal.”

      “Well, you jes’ better, or I’ll lock up my place an’ come right down here to Aunty Bell. Caleb wasn’t home but two nights last week, and it’s only the beginnin’ of summer. I ain’t like Aunty Bell,—she can’t get lonely. Don’t make no difference whether you’re home or not, this place is so chuck-full of folks you can’t turn round in it; but ’way up where I live, you don’t see a soul sometimes all day but a peddler. Oh, I jes’ can’t stand it, an’ I won’t. Land sakes, Aunty Bell, what a lot of folks you’ve had for breakfast!”

      “Swung back the gate with the gesture of a rollicking boy”

      With another laugh she turned to the table, picked up a pile of plates, and carried them into the pantry to Miss Peebles, who was there helping in the wash-up.

      Lacey, who had stopped to look after his drying coat when the men went out, watched her slender, graceful figure, and bright, cheery, joyous face, full of dimples and color and sparkle, the hair in short curls all over her head, the throat plump and white, the little ears nestling and half hidden.

      She had been brought up in the next village, two miles away, and had come over every morning, when she was a girl, to Miss Peebles’s school. Almost everybody knew her and loved her; Captain Joe as much as if she had been his own child. She filled a place in his heart of which he seldom spoke,—never to Aunty Bell,—a place empty until Betty came, and always aching since he and his wife had laid away, on the hill back of the village church, the only child that had ever come to them.

      When Caleb gave up the lightship Captain Joe had established him with Betty’s mother as boarder, and that was how the marriage came about.

      When Betty returned to the room again, her arms loaded with plates, Carleton and Lacey were standing.

      “Take this seat; you must be tired walking down so far,” said Carleton, with a manner never seen in him except when some pretty woman was about.

      “No, I’m not a bit tired, but I’ll set down till I get these boots off. Aunty Bell, can you lend me a pair of slippers? One of these plaguy boots

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