I

“NO ONE,” snapped Keturah Smiley, “can play Providence to a married couple.”

“Some women can play Lucifer,” retorted her brother. His hoarse but not unmusical voice shook with anger.

“I had nothing to do with your wife’s running away,” Keturah Smiley answered. “What is this child you have adopted?”

“I have adopted no child,” said Cap’n John Smiley with coldness. “A child was saved from the wreck of the Mermaid and the men at the station have adopted her. The fancy struck them and—I certainly had no objection. It’s—she’s—a girl, a little girl of about six. We don’t know her name. The men are calling her Mermaid after the ship.”

Keturah Smiley sniffed. She wrapped the man’s coat she wore more closely about her, and made as if to return to her gardening.

Her brother eyed her with a wrathful blue eye. He never saw her that they did not quarrel. He was aware that, deep down, she loved him; he was aware that it was this jealous love of Keturah’s which had caused her to nag the young girl he had married some seven years earlier. Mary Rogers, in Keturah’s eyes, was a silly, thoughtless, flighty person quite unfitted to fill the rÔle of John Smiley’s wife and the mother of John Smiley’s children. She must be made to feel this; Keturah had done her best to make her feel it. And there could be no question that the young wife had felt it. So much so that, joined to John Smiley’s long absences on duty at the Coast Guard station on the beach, joined to her loneliness, joined to who knows what secret doubts and anguish, she had disappeared one day some months after their child was born, taking the baby girl with her and leaving no word, no note, no token. And she had never come back. She had never been traced. She might be dead; the child might be dead; no one knew.

Of course this was the crowning evidence of the unfitness Keturah Smiley had found in her; but somehow Keturah Smiley did not make that triumphant point before her brother. It is possible that Keturah Smiley who wore a man’s old coat, who drove hard bargains at better than six per cent., whose tongue made the Long Islanders of Blue Port shrink as under a cutting lash—it is possible that Keturah Smiley was just the least bit afraid of her brother.If so she could hardly be said to show it. There was no trace of the stricken conscience in the air with which she always faced him. There was none now.

“Well, John,” she said, almost pleasantly, as she hoed her onion bed. “You’re blowing from the southeast pretty strong to-day and you appear to be bringing trouble. I’ll just take three reefs in my temper and listen to what further you have to say.”

John Smiley was not heeding her. He had found that there are times in life when it is necessary not to listen if you would keep sane and kind. He was reflecting on the difficulty of his errand.

“Keturah,” he asked, off-handedly, “this little girl has got to have some clothes. Do you suppose——”

“Perhaps you would like me to adopt her,” his sister interrupted. “No, I thank you, John. As for clothes, I daresay that if you and your men are going to bring up a six-year-old girl the lot of you can get clothes from somewhere.”

Do we always torture the things we love? Love and jealousy, jealousy and torture. Cap’n Smiley saw red for a moment; then he turned on his heel and strode down the path and out the gate.

He walked up the long main street until he came to the handful of stores at the crossroads. Entering one of the largest he went to the counter where a pleasant-faced woman confronted him.“Oh, Cap’n Smiley!” exclaimed the shopwoman. “Are you all right? Are all the men all right? What a terrible time you have been a-having! That ship—she’s pounded all to pieces they say.”

The Coast Guard keeper nodded. He began his errand:

“I’ve got to get some clothes for a little girl that was saved—only one we got ashore alive except one of the hands. I guess I need a complete outfit for a six-year-old,” he explained.

The shopwoman, with various exclamations, bustled about. She spread out on the counter a variety of garments. The keeper eyed them with some confusion. It appeared he had to make a selection; impossible task! “What would you think was best?” he inquired, anxiously. The shopwoman came to his aid and a bundle was made up. Two little gingham dresses, a warm coat; and did he want a nice dress? A dress-up dress? The keeper had given no thought to the matter. A pity the little girl wasn’t along! It was hard to tell what would become her. She had blue eyes and reddish hair? Something dark and plain, but not too dark. A plaid; yes, a warm plaid would be best. Here was a nice pattern.

“I s’pose you’ll be bringing her over here,” ventured the shopkeeper. “Does any one know who she is?... What a pity! Mermaid! After the ship! I declare. I don’t know’s I ever heard that for a girl’s name, though it’s suitable, to be sure. I s’pose you’ll look after her.”

“The—the men have sort of adopted her,” Cap’n Smiley said, hastily. “We thought we could look after her and it would be rather nice having a youngster around. Of course, it’s unusual,” he went on in answer to the shopwoman’s expression of amazement. He thanked her, and taking his bundles, fared forth.

The woman in the shop sent after him a curious and softened look. She had a habit of saying aloud the things that struck her most forcibly. She remarked now to the empty store:

“Adopt her! Well, there’s those will say a crew of Coast Guardsmen are no fit lot to bring up a six-year-old girl. But any child will be safe with John Smiley to look after her.” A new and important thought struck her.

“Goodness!” she ejaculated. “This will be something for Keturah to exercise her brain about!”

II

Cap’n Smiley went from the shop directly to the creek where his boat lay. He stowed his bundles and gave several energetic turns to the flywheel; the engine began to chug loudly, the keeper cast off his line, and taking the tiller started back across the Great South Bay.

It was a five-mile trip across to the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station and Keeper John had a little time for reflection. He had not meant to quarrel with his sister; he had gone with the express determination not to have the usual row, but this had proved impossible. No one could avoid fighting with his sister, himself least of all. If it was not some allusion to his wife it was some allusion to their aunt’s will which, drawn to leave her considerable property equally to John and his sister, had at the last moment been altered to leave all to Keturah because of dissatisfaction with John’s marriage. The keeper had never cared about that while he had had his wife and for a few precious months the baby girl; and after he had lost them it would seem he might have cared less than ever. What was money then? Never-ceasing pain still gnawed at his heart, but for that very reason the gibes of his sister became the more unendurable. Was it not she who was in great measure responsible for the loss of Mary and the little Mary? Cap’n Smiley was a clear-minded man; he did not absolve his wife from blame, but she had been, after all, but a young girl and despite her lightmindedness he had loved her. With all her little affectations, with all her craving for amusement, with all her utter inefficiency as a housekeeper, with all her childishness akin to that of the childlike Dora whom David Copperfield cherished—with all and in spite of all John Smiley had loved this young girl. And he could not but believe that his sister was as much to blame for her behaviour in leaving him as Mary’s own weak nature.

And then the baby girl! How deep the wound of losing her John Smiley would never let the world know. Her name, too, had been Mary.

He thought of the mute little figure awaiting him and his bundles on the beach. She was just the age, as nearly as could be surmised, that his own child would have been if ... if....

What was that his sister had said in regard to his own experience? “No one can play Providence to a married couple.” Well, a pretty thing for her to say! She had certainly played a rÔle anything but providential in her brother’s marriage. But if no one could play Providence to married folk it might still be possible for someone to be a Providence to a single soul.

This little girl, he thought with a thrill, this little girl of the age his own would have been, with her blue eyes and her reddish hair, coppery, almost burnished—she could play Providence in his life, perhaps.

He remembered how, the night of the wreck, he had put her to bed in his own bed and had slept in some blankets on the floor. In the middle of the night he had been wakened by her crying. Some memory in her sleep had made her sob. Very weak, pitiful sobs. They had stirred him to try to comfort her and after a little she had returned to sleep.

III

There was in the crew of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station a man named Hosea Hand and called Ho Ha, partly because these were the first letters of his first and last names, partly because of the presence among the crew of another man called Ha Ha. Ha Ha’s name was Harvey Hawley and he was a silent, sorrowful, drooping figure. He resembled a gloomy question mark and not a joyful exclamation point. Ho Ha, however, was merry; Ho Ha was blithe and gay. Ha Ha, in the week of the six-year-old child’s existence at Lone Cove, had hardly done more than eye her with misgiving. But Ho Ha had picked her up a dozen times a day for little journeys down to the surf, back to the station, over to the bay, and up on the dunes. He had her now, pick-a-back, at the end of the little pier that stuck out into the bay shallows. The chugging of the keeper’s launch grew louder every minute.

“Wave to the Cap’n,” Ho Ha urged her. Mermaid answered his smile with a smile of her own. The afternoon sun struck her coppery hair and framed the smile in a halo.

Of a sudden the chug-chugging stopped, the launch came about neatly, and Ho Ha, hastily setting Mermaid down on the pier, caught the rope end Cap’n Smiley tossed him. Then he laid hold of the keeper’s bundles while John Smiley picked up the little girl and carried her to the station.

Spring had not conquered the chill of nightfall yet. The big stove in the long living room of the station gave forth a happy warmth, and the front lids were red. In the kitchen, through which arrivals passed into the living room, Warren Avery, Surfman No. 4, was working, apron-clad, at the task of dinner. It was his week to cook and he thanked God the agony would soon be over. Cake! He had never been able to make cake with confidence since the day when he had put in salt instead of saleratus. The cake had not risen but his fellows had.

“What you trying to do, Avery?” Ha Ha had demanded. “This might have been made by Lot’s wife.”

In the living room sat the other members of the crew, all except Tom Lupton who was forth on the east patrol. All smoked pipes except the youngest, Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7. Joe was eighteen and Cap’n Smiley suffered great anxiety lest cigarettes impair the physique inherited from generations of bay-going ancestors.

All smoked; at the word that dinner was ready all would cease to smoke and begin to eat. At the conclusion of dinner they would light up again. All were hungry, all were hardy. Seven nights before, drenched to the skin, blinded by rain and hail and braced against a full gale, they had battled all night to save men from a ship smashing to pieces on the outer bar. Not one of them showed a sign of that prolonged and terrible struggle.

Cap’n Smiley drew up his chair at one end of the table, which thus became the head. Mermaid was seated beside him. For her there was mush and milk, the latter supplied by the only cow on the beach, which belonged to Mrs. Biggles. For the others huskier fare: corned beef and cabbage, hardtack and butter, bread pudding and coffee. Each waited on himself and on the others. There must be conversation; Cap’n Smiley valued certain amenities as evidence of man’s civilized state and table conversation was one of them. It devolved on him to start it. He said:

“Has the beach been gone over to-day for wreckage?”

It appeared it had. Jim Mapes and Joe Sayre, aided somewhat by Mrs. Biggles’s husband, had walked east and west almost to the stations on either side of Lone Cove. There was much driftwood from the lost ship. Some tinned provisions had come ashore but seemed hopelessly spoiled. And one body.

“Found it well up on the beach about two miles east,” Jim Mapes told the keeper. “That of the captain. Biggles took it over to Bellogue. I kept the papers he had on him. Put ’em on your desk, Cap’n.”

“Look ’em over later,” the keeper remarked. “Did Biggles take off that fo’c’s’le scum?”

“He did.”

“And a good riddance,” declared the keeper. “Evil-looking fellow, if I ever saw one. A squarehead, too. Some Dutch name or other—Dirk or Derrick or just plain Dirt. The owners said to let him go. But the curious thing is they couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”

He glanced at the small girl beside him. She had finished her supper and sat back in her chair, looking a little timidly and a little sleepily at the men. Cap’n Smiley interrupted his meal to carry her to his room whence, after an interval, he returned grinning happily.

“Eyes closed as soon as she was in bed,” he informed his crew. Then his forehead wrinkled again as he sat down.

“The owners,” he explained, “say that the captain was unmarried. The mate had a wife but no children. The second was a youngster and single. There was no passenger, not even one signed on as ‘medical officer’ or anything like that. The ship was direct from San Francisco, 130 days out. The child must have come aboard before she sailed, but there is no record to show who she is. Have any of you talked to her?”

“I have,” Ho Ha answered. “Easy-like, you know, Cap’n. She says she hasn’t any name. The captain looked after her and she lived in a spare cabin. The steward she remembers because he was kind to her and because he was lame. She had never seen any one aboard before she came on the ship. Doesn’t know how she got there. Woke up to find herself in the cabin and the ‘bed rocking.’ Before being on the boat she lived with ‘a tall lady’ whom she called Auntie. Just Auntie, nothing else. It was in the country, some place near Frisco, maybe. On shipboard the captain and the steward called her ‘little girl’ when they called her anything. None of the others spoke to her.”

Most of the men had finished eating. Cap’n Smiley got up and went to his desk. He picked up the papers that had been washed ashore with the body of the Mermaid’s skipper. There were certain of the ship’s papers, a little memorandum book with no entries, and a personal letter. The ink had run badly on the soaked documents and the letter was illegible except for a few words. These were far apart and decipherable after much pains.

“‘Only child ... return her ... precautions ... do not want my whereabouts ... so no message ... forgiveness’” puzzled out the keeper. From hand to hand the letter went to confirm these conjectural readings. The keeper scratched his head. His forehead showed little vertical lines. His blue eyes were thoughtful, and the wrinkles that converged at their corners, the result of much sea gazing, showed up like little furrows of light and shadow under the rays of the big oil lamp hanging overhead. The sense of so much as he had read was clear enough, but the story was woefully incomplete. What were a few words in a couple of sentences of a long letter? Four large sheets had been covered by that shaky and rather small handwriting; and for the fourteen words he could make out there were at least four hundred lost.

Footfalls sounded on the boardwalk outside the door, not the steady tramp of Tom Lupton returning from the easterly stretch of the beach but lighter steps of someone running. The door opened quickly and Mrs. Biggles appeared among them, white and breathless.

“Cap’n,” she panted. “There’s a stranger on the beach. My Henry hasn’t got back yet—he maybe’ll be staying over to Bellogue till morning. I heard a noise at a window and there was a man’s face. He disappeared quick. I was so frightened I couldn’t run and I couldn’t stay; so finally I run over here. ’Twasn’t any face I ever saw before. It’s—it’s a sailor like the one Henry took off. And—oh, have mercy on us!—they’re all drowned!”

IV

Cap’n Smiley, young Joe Sayre, and Jim Mapes went back with Mrs. Biggles. It was a clear night with many stars but the moon had not yet risen. The fresh, damp southeast wind was playing great chords upon the organ of the surf. Eight minutes’ tramping over the dunes brought the four persons to the Biggles house—a fisherman’s shack of two rooms, but tight and dry. The lamp’s glow came through window panes. After circling the house Cap’n Smiley moved to one of the windows. He came back immediately and said to the others with a low chuckle:

“Whoever he is, he’s hungry. Mrs. Biggles, he’s eating your provender!”

All fear left the bayman’s wife. With an exclamation she advanced before the others could restrain her. They followed her through the door in time to hear her exclaim:

“You good-for-nothing, what are you doing eating my Henry’s cold samp porridge!”

The man choked on a mouthful. Swiftly he rose and tried to slip by her. She gave him a heavy box on the head and the men at the door caught and held him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” asked Cap’n Smiley, sharply, though amazed mirth at the transformation of Mrs. Biggles caused his eyes to twinkle. The sailor stood quietly enough. His English was poor. He was, he said, one of the crew of the wrecked ship. He had been washed ashore unconscious on the night of the disaster but had recovered his senses before dawn, creeping into the sandhills. There he had hidden in bushes and slept. He had slept all day and at night he had prowled about. Breaking into one of the few summer cottages on the beach he had found a little food and on that he had subsisted. He hadn’t approached the Coast Guard Station nor made himself known to any one because of a fight in San Francisco in which he had killed a man. A boarding-house keeper had sheltered him and put him on the Mermaid, but the captain knew who he was and he had expected to be arrested when the ship made New York. The wreck had seemed to offer him a miraculous chance of escape, and he had somehow escaped with his life. Was he to survive in the face of such odds only to lose his life ashore? But now, half-starved and plainly feverish, he could struggle no longer; he would confess and take his chances. His eye remained with a fixed fascination on the food that lay on the table. He wriggled feebly in Cap’n Smiley’s hard grasp to reach it; then sank down limply with delirious mutterings.

The keeper and Joe Sayre picked him up and carried him, as men on shipboard carry a lighter sail, to the station. Mrs. Biggles, entirely reassured, they left in her cabin. At the station a bed was made on the floor in the living room, not far from the stove. The keeper got out his medicine chest and prepared to spend a wakeful night.

The man was evidently in a very bad state. Sedatives seemed to have no effect on him. He tossed about on the floor as if he felt a heaving deck under him. He talked almost continuously. His exchanges with the boarding-house keeper and with the skipper of the Mermaid were on his lips; and interspersed with cringing entreaties were sentences that must have been uttered in a quarrel with the man he had killed. Cap’n Smiley listened patiently, but he could not make much of it.The man killed in the fight had not been a sailor but a landsman, that was evident, and he had had something to do with a woman—no, a girl. Then came the words, “Six years old,” and the keeper suddenly realized that all this might relate to the child sleeping in his bed. He bent down and waited for her name, but it never came. Most likely the speaker did not know it. There was something about a “Captain King,” but the name of the Mermaid’s captain had been Jackson.... This Captain King had had something to do with the six-year-old girl.... She was not his child but another’s.... He had arranged to send her back ... keeping himself out of it.... Child ... Cap’n Smiley’s thoughts travelled to the letter found with the body of the Mermaid’s skipper. It must have been from this Captain King. But to whom was he returning this child who was not his? And who were her parents? All this sick man knew he had learned from an agent of Captain King who had brought the child to the master of the Mermaid, and who had been drinking with the money someone, presumably King, had paid him.... The keeper, with a beating heart, gave heed to the sailor’s talking. Much of it was irrelevant and not a little was unclean; once the man sang part of a chantey, and once he cursed a fellow working beside him aloft on a yard. It was a long and strained vigil that the Coast Guardsman kept, and when, toward morning, the poor wretch on the floor sank into a coma and died, he had an intolerable sense of being cheated, first by a dead man who should have kept his papers in oilskin packets, and then by a dying man whose tongue should either have wagged a few hours longer or never have wagged at all.

V

Spring advanced. The velvety grass of the salt meadows became a delightful green. Mermaid of the Lone Cove Station played all day among the dunes and down by the surf, and the men, particularly Ho Ha, played with her. She had a part in their daily drills and exercises. When they wigwagged with red and white flags she wigwagged with a small red and white flag, too. When the little brass cannon was fired and Jim Mapes, standing on a platform that encircled a high pole—a platform that represented the maintop as the pole represented a ship’s mainmast—caught the heaving line and made it fast Mermaid, her hair glinting in the sunlight, stood beside him. The line rigged, Mermaid made the round trip to the dunes and back, and then a last trip to the dunes in the breeches buoy. Her two small legs protruded ridiculously, and the tip of her head was hidden in the big circle of the buoy’s belt. On other days there was drill with the surf boat, but on these occasions Mermaid could only stand on the beach and jump up and down with excitement while her uncles (as she was taught to call them) waded warily out in big hip boots, watched for the right moment, and pushed beyond the breakers. Cap’n Smiley, who was always helping the little girl to invent games, had suggested to her that she play she was on a desert island. He had explained to her what a desert island was, and had made her acquainted, verbally, with one Robinson Crusoe.

She, Mermaid, was a desert islander and the surfboat, returning, was a boat come to take her off. She had been alone, utterly alone, on the desert island for years. At the sight of the boat coming through the surf emotion should be hers. It was, and would have been anyway; but it might never have been the imaginative and kindled thing it became with the keeper’s help. Standing at the tiller he would call out, as the boat turned shoreward:

“Courage! You shall be restored to your family and friends!”

And when the boat was beached he would advance to the child, bow respectfully before her, and even sometimes, kneeling, kiss her hand. He would say:

“Your gracious Majesty, we have voyaged to the Indies and have taken possession of them in the name of Castile!”

Or:

“Welcome, my lady, back to the world of living men!”

Or, merely bowing, and with a deference as studied as Stanley’s in the African jungle:“Madame Mermaid, I believe!”

Mermaid received him without full comprehension but with high glee. With a deplorable lack of etiquette she invariably reached up both arms, put them around his lowered neck, and kissed him.

She was pretty with the promise of loveliness, perhaps of beauty. It was not only her hair and her eyes but the modelling of her chin and the spacing of her features. The skin was unusually clear, with colour in the cheeks, and a few faint, clustered freckles.

The men were devoted to her and she returned their affection. Even Ha Ha, the sad soul, the introspective one, though he never smiled, was less gloomy in his opinions when Mermaid stood by. Ho Ha, unable to compete with the keeper in telling engrossing stories, set himself to work to provide pets. There were foxes on the beach and he had come upon a litter. The cubs were dedicated to Mermaid—until nightfall when their mother gnawed the ropes which fastened them. Ho Ha sought vainly in Bellogue and Blue Port for a white rabbit with pink eyes. The beach was infested with plain brown rabbits, for the most part rather unafraid of man. Mermaid could approach within a few feet of these but they would not stay to let her touch them. Occasionally, trotting along the ocean shore beside Ho Ha, Mermaid came upon the round-toed tracks of a cat. Then the coast guardsman would explain how some of the summer people had left their cats on the beach in the fall to fend for themselves. Cats so abandoned, explained Ho Ha, quickly became wild; they doubtless caught birds and visited the water’s edge in the reasonable hope of finding a bit of fish for supper. They were as wild as the foxes and much more savage; if Mermaid should see one she must not make advances lest she be set upon and clawed. The sinuous line in the sand was the trail of a snake, probably a harmless garter snake, but possibly a black snake. Mermaid shuddered and her little hand closed more firmly over Ho Ha’s fingers.

While her natural education was thus proceeding Cap’n Smiley gave much thought to the question of her schooling. Soon she would be seven, if, indeed, she were not already. Since the lack of a birthday is troublesome he bestowed his own upon her and promised some sort of a birthday party come May 27th.

But before this celebration ripened the agreeable course of life on the beach suffered an intrusion. On a fine May day Cap’n Smiley was puzzled to see advancing along the beach and turning in toward his station a group of women whom he recognized, as they neared, to be from Blue Port. Hastily assuring himself that his sister was not one, he arrested the drill with the breaches buoy and stepped forward to meet them. There were Mrs. Horton, Mrs. Brand, Mrs. Dayton, and Miss Errily. The four came up slowly, talking among themselves with earnestness. When they were within earshot they stopped and Miss Errily seemed to take the lead, her thin lips closed in a straight line.

“Good morning,” said Cap’n Smiley, pleasantly. “We’re about finished with the drill, but there’s time enough to see it done over if——”

Miss Errily interrupted him:

“We didn’t come to see the drill, Cap’n Smiley,” she said in the severe tone natural to her. “We came to protest, on behalf of good people, against your allowing that child with the improper name to stay here. No one knows anything about her and I dare say the name you’ve given her is no worse than the rest if it were known; but a crew of rough men is not a fit surrounding in which any child should be brought up.”

For an ex-schoolteacher Miss Errily’s sentence construction was not flattering, but it was not the construction which bothered the keeper. The pleasant expression left his face.

“I don’t like insinuations, Miss Errily. Say what you have to say right out.”

Miss Errily compressed her lips more tightly before reopening them.

“Everyone knows, Cap’n Smiley, that this girl is a nobody-knows-who.”

“Go on,” the keeper told her.

“Doubtless,” pursued Miss Errily, “she is a—no, I cannot bring myself to say it, and it is unnecessary—an Improper Child” (Miss Errily’s tone capitalized the words) “With Improper Origins and Antecedents. Her proper place is an Institution. Naturally, the Children’s Home connected with the county house and poor farm. They train them very well for domestic service, and good servants are becoming scarce. Few nowadays can keep their place and so, few keep their places. Besides, it is a Scandal—I speak frankly—an Open Scandal for a child of her years to be living here with rough men who cannot look after her properly nor discipline her. School, church, and home; she goes without all three.”

Cap’n Smiley’s blue eyes flashed as the blue ocean at which he had been gazing flashed when the sun caught the waves. Now he turned and faced the women, but Ho Ha, who had been listening with clenched fists, was before him. At the beginning of Miss Errily’s remarks Ho Ha had whispered in Mermaid’s ear and the child had scampered toward the station, not unpleased, for she did not like the looks the visitors gave her.

“Wait a minute, Miss Errily,” said Ho Ha. He drawled the words. “Wait—a—minute. You are not holding school, now. Who sent you?”

The spokeswoman stiffened. She replied, angrily:

“We represent the Feeling of a Community. We——”

“And this,” observed Ho Ha, not waiting for her, “is another community. If you represent any feelings except your own and those of a few other meddlesome women, Miss Errily, it’s the first time in forty years—you’re about sixty-two, aren’t you? My father was in your first class and you were about twenty-two then.”

“Hosea!” said the keeper, in a low tone of rebuke, but he shook oddly as he said it.

“My age,” quivered Miss Errily, “whatever it is, should be sufficient to insure Respectful Treatment.” But she was obviously upset. Mrs. Brand took her place.

“Insult me, if you dare, Hosea Hand!” she cried, challengingly. Ho Ha looked at her thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t tell any one to his face what you write about people to other people, Maria Brand,” he rejoined. “I still have your letter in which you wrote me that Cap’n Smiley’s sister——”

“I never wrote such a letter!” almost shrieked Maria Brand, with a look of half terror at the keeper, whose eye, fixed on the glittering ocean, remained there. Ho Ha, turning to Mrs. Dayton as if he were finishing a sentence addressed to her, went on implacably.

“—if you must look after other people’s children, why not look after your husband’s?” Mrs. Dayton went red and white, half opened her lips, and then started to walk rapidly away. The ranks had broken. Miss Errily and Maria Brand, followed by Mrs. Horton, were also in rapid retreat in the direction taken by Amelia Dayton who had no children, and whose husband’s did not bear the name of Dayton. Cap’n Smiley frowned on his surfman. “That was going too far!” he censured him.

“Not a bit, not a bit!” said Ho Ha with heat. “Nothing but a pack of busybodies! Dick Dayton’s brats roll in dirt while Amelia Dayton lends money at usury. My regret is that I didn’t get a chance to ask Jane Horton if she had paid her farmer’s fine yet. You know he watered the milk and I can guess by whose orders!”

VI

For the birthday party they had Mrs. Biggles and her Henry as guests, and a great cake made by Ho Ha from a recipe supplied by Mrs. Biggles. It carried seven candles—one for each of Mermaid’s years and one, the same ones, to be sure, for each of her seven uncles. Dad, as Cap’n Smiley desired her to call him, blew them all out with one vasty breath, whereat Mrs. Biggles cried out that this was Mermaid’s privilege. But the little girl could not extinguish her seven candles all at once any more than she could kiss her seven uncles collectively, so she gave individual attention to each candle and each uncle. Mrs. Biggles must have a kiss, too, and returned it several times over; and became so excited that she kissed her Henry in his and the public eye, but then, as she observed, his whiskers left her hardly any other region and her surroundings left her hardly any other choice. There was much jesting and even a drinking of healths in some cider Mrs. Biggles’s Henry had contributed, the chief toast being Cap’n Smiley’s “to my seven surfmen and one surfwoman” with a pinch of Mermaid’s soft pink cheek.

Spring swept into summer; the green meadows were set off by great blooms of pink marsh mallow; the sun, shining down vertically on the white sand of the beach, caused a brilliant glare that changed, at the horizons, to a blue haze of heat. White-sailed boats moved over the five-mile width of Great South Bay, taking to and fro men in white trousers and gaily-clad women and children who might wish to spend a day at the tavern to the westward of the station, a place of ragtime music, clicking billiard balls, “shore” dinners, and home-prepared lunches. The clean sand was daily littered with empty shoeboxes and crumpled paper napkins by these family groups who picnicked between dips in the surf. Except for a few inevitable “fine swimmers” they clung, laughing and shrieking, to a line of rope tethered to a barrel just beyond the break of the waves.

With the children of these beach parties Mermaid could play the day long and sometimes did; many of the visitors were summer residents of the south shore of Long Island, but not many of them had heard the little girl’s story; if they gave her any thought they accepted her as a child of one of the Coast Guardsmen. Strollers who came to the station to look at the apparatus of life saving—the breeches buoy, the life car which travelled to and from a distressed ship and the shore, the surf boat resting on its truck, and ready to be hauled laboriously through a mile or more of sand, the gun—these people would see Mermaid, but never think to ask her history. Why should they, indeed, even suppose she had one? And in telling of wrecks along the beach Cap’n Smiley generally omitted any mention of one; if he was asked about the time the Mermaid came ashore he would answer quite willingly, but a specific question was necessary to elicit the most romantic and still mysterious part of that story.

The keeper had many other tales unusual enough to satisfy the craving of the casual caller for a picturesque yarn. Out of his thirty years at the station he could supply episodes ranging from the ridiculous to the horrible, and many rehearsals, joined to some natural gift as a narrator, enabled him to tell his stories well. In pleasant summer weather, however, they lost much of their possible effectiveness; to appraise them at their true worth you had to hear them in winter, sitting and smoking or dreaming by the blazing stove in the station’s long living room, a lamp swinging overhead, the wind shaking the building while the sound of the not-distant surf came in to you as a thunderous and unbroken roar. On a summer’s night with all the stars shining, the wind whispering and bringing coolness from the leagues of ocean, the surf merely murmuring and—yes, the mosquitoes biting moderately—on such a night you could form no just conception of the setting in which these tales belonged.

With fall, came the question of Mermaid and school. After a severe mental struggle Cap’n Smiley decided that this could go over for a year. He could teach the child her letters; as a matter of fact, she already knew most of them from the weekly practice at wigwagging with the red and white flags. The keeper knew of no one on “the mainland” to whom he felt willing to entrust the child; he was inclined to consider his sister out of the question; in another year some satisfactory arrangement might present itself. Besides, both he and the men, but he himself particularly, would be loath to part with Mermaid. She was a big thing in their lives, and in Cap’n Smiley’s the biggest. Mrs. Biggles had said lately that she and her Henry were getting along; they contemplated giving up life on the beach except for a short while in summer. They would take a house in Blue Port and live there ten months out of the twelve. Should they do this Mermaid would have a good home while she was getting her schooling; Cap’n Smiley and the crew would miss her sorely, but their minds would be easy, and every one of them on his twenty-four hours’ leave could look in on her and see how she was.... When the time should be ripe to carry this general scheme into execution it was Cap’n Smiley’s intention legally to adopt Mermaid, although, as he said to himself, Mermaid Smiley would not do as a name. It had altogether too strong a flavour of the portraits on certain pages of the Sunday newspapers. He would adopt her as Mary Smiley ... though in all likelihood she would always be called Mermaid. The name well befitted her, dancing about down there on the beach and slipping in and out of the water in the bathing suit Mrs. Biggles had made for her from some old dress of pale green with silver edgings. Musing over the name Cap’n Smiley burst into such laughter that Ha Ha the Gloomy, peeling potatoes in the kitchen, gave a start and cut his finger.

“I was just thinking of Henry Biggles’s father,” the keeper explained. “’Member him? Lived here on the beach. Eighteen children. Old Jacob Biggles hadn’t much education; in fact, he couldn’t read and write. Named most of the children after vessels that came ashore on the beach. One was Monarch Biggles—you’ve heard of Mon Biggles?—and another was Siamese Prince Biggles—that’s Si Biggles. Then along came a lot of boys and a lot of wrecks named the Queen, the Merry Maid, and other unsuitable things. Poor Jacob was in despair. Some of the boys had to wait eight years to get a handle.”“He could have got names out of the Bible,” Ha Ha pointed out.

“He could get ’em but he couldn’t pronounce ’em.”

VII

In September Mermaid and Cap’n Smiley and Ho Ha went beach-plumming. As they wandered over the dunes picking the blue-red-purple berries there was much conversation, sometimes conducted in shouts, when the three were spread a little apart.

“D’ you know the Latin name of these plums, Hosea?” demanded the keeper. Ho Ha looked very serious.

“My bad mark in school was always in Latin!”

The keeper winked at Mermaid. Ho Ha had gone to a little red schoolhouse, winters, until he was thirteen.

“It’s prunus maritima,” he reminded the scholar. “That’s almost calling ’em maritime prunes.”

“They’re commoner than prunes with us. Do they get the name from being served in sailors’ boarding-houses?”

“You were shanghaied to sea, once, weren’t you, Hosea?”

“Sixteen when it happened. On South Street, New York. Froze my feet standing a trick at the wheel off Cape Horn. Mate came into the fo’c’s’le and grabbed one foot and twisted it until I howled; then he pulled me out on deck,” said the Coast Guard, reminiscently. “I’d always been sort of crazy about the sea from a kid.” He emptied his pickings into a big basket, straightened up a moment, resumed his picking, and said:

“I worshipped, just about, an uncle, my mother’s brother, who’d been to sea all his life. And when I was a shaver on our farm up in the hills in the middle of the Island I slept in the attic. Every night, Cap’n, as I got in bed I could see through a little attic window, right over the tree tops Fire Island light. ’Twas maybe twenty miles away. ’Twould show, just a faint spark, then kindle, then glow bright, then flame like—like a beacon. Just for a few seconds; then ’twould die out. Occulting. It seemed to beckon to me. I was only a kid and there was something wonderful and friendly about that light! And secret, too. It seemed to be signalling just to me, a little chap in an ice-cold attic on a lonely hill farm. Seemed as if that light said: ‘Come on, Hosea Hand! I’m set here to tell you that there’s a great world out here waiting for you! I’m an outpost! There’s lands and peoples and adventures and ten thousand leagues of ocean—and there’s life, the greatest adventure of all! Hurry up and grow up, Hosea Hand!’ And then all shivering and excited, I’d crouch under the big, pieced quilt and watch that light come and glow, shine and dim, flame and go out—until I’d fall asleep and dream I was out there where it called me!”

The little girl listened, fascinated. She had stopped picking, and her childish breast rose and fell with quick breathing. Cap’n Smiley picked perfunctorily and once his hand closed so tightly about the coloured plums that they crushed them. Ho Ha worked steadily and after a few moments he went on:

“I was fourteen when my father died. The year before I’d quit school to help work the farm. In those days there wasn’t any science called agriculture. We just tilled the soil. My father was always trying to get more land; I used to wonder what for, when it was such slavery to work it! Maybe he suspicioned the day would come when we’d understand the soil and know how to make it yield without back-breaking and heart-break.”

“Your brother is pretty comfortably off, Hosea.”

“Yes,” said Ho Ha, with a curious inflection. “Yes, Richard’s comfortable. But he’s getting along. You know he’s ten years older than me.”

Cap’n Smiley gave an ejaculation of surprise. There had been some unfairness of dealing by Richard Hand with Hosea Hand after their father’s death, but the keeper did not know exactly what it was. The Blue Port story had it that Richard Hand had wanted his brother to stay and help work the farm, and Ho Ha had run off to sea instead. Back of this lay a tale of the father’s will. This had left the dead man’s estate to be divided equally between the sons. Richard, however, was to have the farm intact; and he was to effect such a settlement as would assure Hosea of his share in cash for whatever use he wanted to make of it. The father’s idea had been simple: the younger boy hated the farm and wanted an education; this money would help him get it; after that he must fend for himself.

So much Cap’n Smiley knew; so much, indeed, everybody knew. The rest no one appeared exactly to know, but the general impression was that Richard, as executor, had wound up his father’s affairs to suit himself.

“What happened?” Cap’n Smiley asked himself as he picked away, giving only absent attention to Mermaid’s chatter. “Knowing Richard Hand as I do, I suspect Hosea never got a cent of money and never will. I can make a pretty good guess that after paying the debts there was nothing left but the farm. To settle fairly with the boy, Dick Hand would have had to borrow money by mortgaging the place—and I don’t see him doing that!

“Humph!” concluded the keeper to himself. “Fourteen-year-old boy with no one to look out to see he got his rights. No lawyer had a hand in that estate! Dick delays the settlement; in the meantime, his young brother gets restless. Dick treats him badly; insists the boy stay and help work the farm; Hosea runs away. Dick winds up the estate; represents himself willing to settle with his brother but unable to; don’t know his whereabouts. Ho Ha away for years; when he comes back he tells his brother to go to the devil!”Mermaid was conducting a dialogue with the wronged Hosea.

“Uncle Ho!” she cried, and Cap’n Smiley was reminded of the “Land, ho!” of the sailor. “Wasn’t that a queer way for David to deal with the Ph’listines?” Mrs. Biggles read the Bible Sunday mornings to her Henry and Mermaid.

“Why,” inquired Mermaid, “do you suppose he spanked them?”

“Who spanked?”

“David spanked the Ph’listines,” explained Mermaid. Ho Ha and the keeper eyed each other and then looked perplexedly at the red-haired mite. “How do you know he spanked the Philistines?” ventured the keeper.

“Why, it says he smote—that means struck—them ‘hip and thigh,’” she replied. “I’ll be awful glad when I can read about it myself. David threw a stone at Gollyath and killed him. Maybe a good spanking was all Gollyath needed.”

“Maybe,” assented Cap’n Smiley. Ho Ha was speechless. The keeper looked at him. “See your uncle, Mermaid,” he directed. “Living up to his name, isn’t he?”

The child caught the contagion of laughter and bubbled with it herself. “Do tell me what’s so funny, Uncle Ho,” she begged. “Please do!”

“A ghost just told me a joke,” said Ho Ha, looking at her with twinkling eyes. Mermaid was alert and excited at once. She believed in ghosts, not only because she was seven years old but because she lived on the Great South Beach where ghosts are natural and both respectable and respected. She clamoured to hear the joke. Ho Ha considered. He did not know as he ought to tell her; perhaps the ghost would not like that; it might want to tell Mermaid itself.

“Could you tell me what ghost it is?” the youngster besought him. “Was it the Duneswoman?”

“No,” Ho Ha answered. “It was one of the pirates. One of Kidd’s men. One of those fellows with gold earrings and black whiskers. Well—I don’t know’s there’s any harm in my telling you. He said if Kidd had been spanked proper as a boy——” Ho Ha stopped, as if no more need be said, and shook his head with a regretful air. Mermaid remarked:

“Do you suppose, Uncle Ho, that Mrs. Biggles spanks Mr. Biggles?”

“No doubt she has to sometimes,” agreed Ho Ha, with perfect seriousness.

Mermaid emptied her apron of a pint of plums. Her mind slipped back to ghosts.

“Dad,” she asked Cap’n Smiley, “does the Duneswoman know everything about the beach?”

“I think she does, pretty nearly,” the keeper told her. “Do you see much of her?”

“Only her head and arms. Sometimes she reaches out her arm to me.”“I meant, do you see her often?”

“Oh, yes! Except when I’m with Mrs. Biggles. Mrs. Biggles says she never has seen her. She says I ought not to see her and mustn’t pay any ’tention to her,” Mermaid informed him.

“Perhaps that’s because Mrs. Biggles never sees her and doesn’t know how nice she is.”

“Just what I said.” Mermaid bit a plum and made a wry face. She wanted to ask Dad more about the Duneswoman.

That was a ghost only he and she had seen—a lovely Face and Arm that sometimes floated for an instant on the dark summer ocean, looked toward you ... and was gone.

VIII

A golden October when, for days, the sun shone and the beach was veiled with faintly coloured mists; when the crack of duck hunters’ guns came from over the bay; when the ocean advanced on the smoothly sanded shore in long and majestic curves, so that to stand upon the dunes and look at it was like looking down a flight of steps of boundless width.... The Atlantic made itself into a glittering staircase leading straight to the sun.

October! Driftwood was gathered from the beach for burning in the Biggles’s fireplace where it snapped and was consumed by the green and blue and parti-coloured flames. Before the singing and rainbow fire Mermaid often knelt at dusk. Mrs. Biggles would spread a slice of bread for her with jelly made from the beach plums gathered a month earlier. There is a wild-woodish, bitter-sweet flavour peculiar to beach plum jelly and preserves. Mermaid loved it. To taste it while dreaming before the magic fire was delicious beyond words.

October! It began to be sharp o’ nights. The men at the station rolled themselves in blankets, as they slept without sheets in an unheated attic. Only Mermaid had a regular bed with sheets and pillow cases and a gay comforter. Stormy days began, and long, wonderful evenings about the blazing stove in the station’s big room. Cap’n Smiley read aloud and told stories; the men asked questions and spun yarns. Mermaid, curled up in a corner, listened eagerly, hardly daring to speak lest the hour be noted and they pack her off to bed.

Wild stories, weird stories. Cap’n Smiley is speaking.

“Ah,” says the keeper. “There was that steamship which broke her machinery some way off here and could only move on reversed propellers. She backed all the way from here to Sandy Hook. And there was that ship with the cargo of salt. When she came ashore it salted the ocean; the water was a little brinier for days. And we got aboard as she lay on the bar at low tide, the sea having gone down. Not a soul. All swept overboard and lost. We peered down a hatch, then I went down all alone. I had an awful setback when, on my moving some sacks, out bobbed a dead man staring straight at me. Dead, and propped up in the salt. But the worst was the wreck of the Farallone. Some of you weren’t here then and as for you, Joe”—he addressed the youngest surfman—“you hadn’t been born. The Farallone. Yes.

“She came ashore on a night when you couldn’t see your upraised hand. She struck hard on the outer bar and broached to in the trough of the sea. It was freezing cold. We saw—nothing. Up there on the dunes we fired shot after shot, sending out line after line; pure guesswork. Finally one landed and was made fast. The crew began coming ashore. About a dozen trips of the buoy, I think. And from what we could learn the captain and the cook were left.

“The cook came along all right, and then we hauled the buoy back for the skipper.

“At the signal—jerks on the line—we pulled. The buoy came along for maybe fifteen feet and then checked. Dead stop. We couldn’t budge it a foot farther. We hauled back and tried over again. Came just so far and then stuck, immovable.

“You couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear. There was nothing to do but to haul back and forward, back and forward about a hundred times. We wore ourselves all out, though probably the work was all that kept us from freezing to death. Some of us had frostbites. After a while a faint light appeared. Dawn, frightened by that merciless gale. Dawn, and then daylight; and at last we could see. The ocean went down; wind had gone down in the night. What we saw was the body of the captain of the Farallone hanging stiffly in the buoy.

“The line had been made fast to the mast too near the deck. As we hauled away each man, coming to the ship’s bulwark, had to lift his body over it. The last man had been able to get into the buoy, but in the minute or two before he reached the bulwark he had frozen helpless; and when he came to it he couldn’t lift himself over.”

There was a silence in which men drew on their pipes. The hand of young Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7, rolling a cigarette, shook slightly. Mermaid saw the scene. She burned to ask her Dad if he, or any of the others, had seen the Duneswoman that night in the fearful storm. Had she walked abroad on the waters, passing unharmed through the great breakers of inky-black water with invisible crests of white and curling foam? Her face—did no one see it beside the staring form of the dying skipper? Did none see her arm about him? Why had she not lifted him over the rail? See.... Dad had said no one could see anything. But you could always: see the Duneswoman when she was about, however black the night. Who was she? The little girl lost herself in a timid reverie.

“Lemons,” Uncle Ho was saying. “Oranges, onions—fine big Spanish onions from Valencia; pineapples and pomegranates, even Havana see-gars but mostly spoiled by salt water. Once, army blankets; we slept warm that winter. Cocoanuts every little while. The next cocoanut I find I’ll carve a mask out of for Mermaid.”

Her cheeks flushed and she tossed her hair and looked at him with dancing eyes. Wasn’t Uncle Ho good! And he was wonderfully skillful with a knife; a full rigged ship carved in a great glass bottle lay in the keeper’s room to witness his craftsmanship. He did marvellous things with bits of rope. He had promised to make her a hammock and with some fine white rope he was braiding a mat to adorn the little shelf which was her dressing table. Rose knots, diamond knots; knots and hitches and splices without number—Uncle Ho was master of them all. Mermaid listened to his further talk about the things that ships jettison and the things that wash ashore.

“Even little girls come ashore,” said Uncle Ho with great seriousness and nodding his head many times. “Not to speak of animals. We brought a Shetland pony to land in the breeches buoy and, Mermaid, you should have heard him squeal!” Mermaid gave a little squeal of her own. “Not like that,” corrected Ho Ha. “He said, ‘Nay-ay-ay. Nay-yay-yay-yay!’ That means ‘No!’ Why, a Dutch ship, named the Dutch for good luck, had a cow in the afterhold to provide the skipper with fresh milk every morning. And lots of ships have pigs aboard ’em. Sheep, too. You might get wool enough for a new suit of homespun.

“But the strangest thing was the animal ship. Mind I don’t say it was Noah’s Ark, Mermaid. The skipper was a youngish man, not old enough to be Noah. Maybe one of his sons. Now this Ark of Noah & Sons came ashore in fine weather, but very thick. So much fog young Noah couldn’t tell where he was. He couldn’t shoot the sun at noon. Well——

“He had pairs of almost all kinds of animals aboard. They were a consignment to the big Zoo in New York. There was a pair of camels and a pair of leopards and a pair of lions and pairs of snakes and two beautiful giraffes with necks so long that they could see as well as a man in the topgallant rigging. The Ark came on in fine weather but it didn’t stay fine. Bad southeasterly storm blew up and when it abated the Ark was so leaky that the skipper—young Noah—put the animals over the side thinking they’d drown. He hated to do it, but the ship was all going to pieces. But you know, Mermaid, that all animals can swim. And most of these critters swam ashore. Little girl, you should have seen them! But, no! I’m glad you weren’t here. Life wasn’t safe on the beach here then with those pairs of animals ranging about. Finally we had to shoot them all with the little brass cannon.”

Mermaid had been listening, at first doubtfully and with enchanted pleasure; but now something about the story itself joined to some oddity of expression in the faces of her other uncles caused her to say:

“Uncle Ho, that isn’t so, is it?”

“Not so, but so-so,” replied Ho Ha, persuasively. “If you mean, is it true, why——”

“Oh, I don’t mind it’s not being true,” explained the little girl, twisting her fingers. “It spoils things to have them true—just a little—doesn’t it?”

The smile left Ho Ha’s face.

“By gracious! I believe that’s a fact!” he exclaimed.

IX

Keturah Smiley stopped digging potatoes and walked briskly back to her house. She washed her hands, but did not change her shabby old man’s coat. Keturah’s everyday attire was preponderantly masculine. She refrained, however, from wearing trousers. But a man’s soft hat was generally pinned to her head, a man’s coat was usually on her back, and her low-heeled, heavy-soled walking shoes were number eights.

She dried her hands, put them in the coat pockets and started up the lane to the centre of the village. On the way she met Sim Jenkins, and told him sharply that if he didn’t pay the interest on his mortgage more promptly she would demand the principal. Sim looked frightened. He knew that Keturah would not hesitate to foreclose.At the principal street intersection of Blue Port stood the postoffice and the few clustered shops. There was one two-story structure which constituted Blue Port’s only office building. On the ground floor were a real estate agent, a milliner, and a store where cigars and soft drinks, magazines and writing paper could be bought. Up the flight of stairs were a doctor’s office and the places of business of Blue Port’s lawyers. Blue Port had one saloon, two churches, and three lawyers, one of whom was a justice of the peace. To this functionary, Judge Hollaby, Miss Smiley made her way.

The Judge was sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and his hat on his head, reading Seneca on old age. He had not enjoyed a plate of oysters the evening before with his usual relish, and this had profoundly depressed him. He was therefore reading; Judge Hollaby found in reading the consolation that some men find in drink, although he was by no means a teetotaler.

Miss Smiley opened the door without knocking. As she entered rapidly Judge Hollaby put down his feet with an almost youthful spryness, and hastily removed his hat. His visitor, to his pain, picked up the half-smoked cigar that lay extinguished on a corner of his desk and threw it in the cuspidor. The name of it was La Coloratura and it had cost 13 cents straight.

Judge Hollaby knew better than to waste breath in formal greetings. Keturah Smiley seated herself and said:

“Don’t beat around the bush but tell me in words I understand just the disposition of the property my aunt left me.”

The lawyer felt momentarily flurried. He really had forgotten the provisions of old Keturah Hawkins’s will. However, it would not do to say so—wouldn’t do at all.

“Entailed, Miss Smiley, entailed,” he said with what he intended to be a retrospective and thoughtful air. To his client it seemed merely absent-minded.

“Please put your mind on this, Judge Hollaby!” she commanded in a tone that reminded the lawyer of several schoolma’ams rolled into one. “I ask you to use plain words and you start off by using a word like ‘entailed’! Explain yourself. What is entail?”

The Judge was very uncomfortable. He made the absurd mistake of trying to impress his visitor.

“Under entail,” he began to explain, “an estate is so bequeathed that the inheritors cannot bequeath it at their pleasure; the fee is abridged and curtailed——”

An impatient sound escaped Miss Smiley.

“Curtail, if you please,” she said, “your fine-sounding description. As I understand the matter, my aunt left me all her property in and for my lifetime. I am to have the free use of it. I can throw it all in the bay if I like——”

“Except the real estate,” interjected the Judge.“I daresay I could dam Hawkins creek and flood that,” retorted Keturah, then went on: “I can use every cent of it, spend it, waste it; and if there is nothing left, no one will inherit it.”

“Naturally not,” assented Judge Hollaby.

“Unnaturally,” said his client, sharply. “It would be an unnatural thing to do.”

“Certainly it would,” said her lawyer, nervously. “Not the least in your character.” Some misfortune of accent caught the lady’s ear and she rounded on him quickly.

“What is my character, Judge Hollaby?” she demanded.

Perhaps it was the oysters, perhaps it was Seneca on old age, perhaps it was a sign of old age itself; at any rate, the justice’s mind could not leap gracefully into the breach thus torn in his defences.

“Your character, Miss Smiley?” He tried to express a sense of shock by his intonation.

“I am not loved, I suspect,” Miss Smiley said, ignoring his palpable distress. “I think it very likely there are those who hate me. But if I am not respected in the community it is time I knew it. I am honest and I deal uprightly. I don’t write slanderous letters, like Maria Brand; I don’t cheat, like Jane Horton; I don’t try to improve everybody like that uncommon nuisance of an Errily woman. Nor do I countenance a disgraceful husband, as Amelia Dayton does. You will say that I talk like a Pharisee, ‘holier than thou’ and so forth. Judge Hollaby, if there were more Pharisees it would be a better world! A precious lot of men and women can only walk straight when it’s to outshine their neighbours who are walking crooked!”

Gradually recovering, the lawyer heard Miss Smiley saying:

“I’m not here to preach a sermon, but to get information and some advice. The advice I may take and I may not; the information I’ll certainly take if I can get it out of you.”

She reverted to Keturah Hawkins’s will. “I can do as I please absolutely with the property?”

“Unquestionably. But whatever you leave goes to your brother, if he survives you, and to his children, if he has any, in the event he predeceases you.”

“Predeceases!” snorted Miss Smiley, thrusting her hands in her pockets. “What a word! That applies only to the property my aunt left?”

“Only.”

“And only to so much of that as I leave?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you call it entail?”

The lawyer’s heart sank.

“Under our laws,” he explained, “the bequest could go no farther. The old English law of entail is broken here. You can doubly devise but you cannot do more. The law says that the dead hand shall not——”Keturah reflected, her severe eyes looking at and through the man. She could question him freely whether he saw the drift of her questions or not. She had a moderate contempt for Horace Hollaby, as she had for most men, a contempt based on her dealings with them in which she invariably came out best. The justice had one virtue, however, that Keturah considered rare in males. There were things he heard, things he knew, and things he guessed, about which he never talked. On certain matters she had never been able to bully a word out of him. And whatever she told him would be kept in the back of his head.

“My brother,” she said, her face almost expressionless, “has, or had, a wife and child. Are they presumed to be legally dead?”

Judge Hollaby told her they were not.

“In any case, my sister-in-law could not come into any of the property?”

“No.”

“Could an adopted child of my brother inherit the property?”

“I should say not; I should want to look at the exact wording of your aunt’s will.”

“You needn’t,” said Miss Smiley, rising with abruptness. “For if my brother ever adopts a child I shall give away or throw away every cent of that money!” She moved with decision toward the door. With her hand on the knob she turned and said brutally: “Keep your mouth shut!”

The door came to after her with a business-like bang.

X

In winter the Great South Bay is sometimes frozen over, and then it can be crossed very swiftly on a scooter, a better vehicle than the Hudson River iceboat because it will go from ice into water and back again on to ice without a spill. It is also more easily handled and travels faster. But there are days and sometimes weeks when the bay is impassable even for a scooter, which is merely a tiny boat with a pair of runners, after all. Thaw and freeze, freeze and thaw; a bay full of big, floating masses of ice, or so ridged and hillocked that nothing but an airplane will take you over it. And there were no airplanes when Mermaid, all wrapped and mittened, looked out upon the bay that winter of her eighth year.

There was a telephone linking the Coast Guard stations on the beach with one at Quogue on the Island itself, but direct communication with the ordinary system there was none. On one side of the living room of the Quogue Station was the beach phone, on the opposite wall was a “local and long distance.” Members of the Quogue crew, called up on either wire, obligingly relayed messages along the other.

In this manner it was made known to Cap’n Smiley one February morning that his sister wished to see him.

The keeper was privately astounded. So far as a hasty recollection served him, his sister had never before asked to see him about anything. The bay could not be crossed and he sent her word to that effect, thinking that she might disclose her purpose. Her reply, toned down by the drawl of Surfman No. 3, Quogue Station, was merely for him to visit her as soon as possible and to bring the little girl.

While waiting for the bay to freeze smooth, or clear from further thaws, Cap’n Smiley had some uneasy moments. He had never taken Mermaid to his sister’s and he did not like the idea. She had seen the little girl; had met him walking with Mermaid on the streets of Blue Port; had stopped to exchange a frosty word or two and then had walked on, ignoring the child completely. What could she be up to now?

He was so uneasy that he raised the question, in a guarded way, with Ho Ha. He could do this, for Ho Ha knew all about his sister, and without actually saying very much, both could say a good deal.

“My opinion she has some proposition to lay before you,” commented Ho Ha.

“I don’t care to consider propositions,” replied the keeper.

Ho Ha drew his weathered cheek together with his fingers.“It might advantage Mermaid some way,” he suggested.

The keeper made a motion indicative of distrust.

About a week elapsed before the bay froze hard. Mermaid, in many layers of wool, with a red muffler about her throat, trotted down to the bayside where her Dad put her in the scooter. Then as the odd little craft gathered way, he half reclined so as to steer with her jib and roll about handily to ballast her.

They shot along at a mile a minute or better. The air was like impalpable ice pressing against Mermaid’s small cheeks and roaring in her ears. She could hardly open her eyes for the rush of tears. She shouted, but could barely make herself heard. It was all over in five or six minutes. The five-mile stretch had been crossed; Dad rounded to; the sail, so enormous a top-hamper on so tiny a potbellied body, came down, and they were off Blue Port, with only a little way to walk to tread the reassuring, if rutty, earth.

Mermaid put her hand in Dad’s and they walked to the old-fashioned and heavily shuttered house where Keturah lived. She met them at the door and ushered them into the living room, which was also the kitchen, but very large, so that there was no sense of crowding. A hot fire burned in the stove, and slowly Cap’n Smiley divested Mermaid of her cocoon. It was a little butterfly of an unusual sort that emerged. Keturah, looking with a severe, impassive face at the proceeding, said at last, without altering a muscle of her face or softening her customary tone:

“She looks very much as you would have looked, John, at her age, if you had been a girl.”

Her brother stared at the child with a gentleness in his eyes that left them when he glanced at his sister.

“Are you going to adopt her, John?”

The answer came with decision.

“I think I shall.”

“What about her schooling?”

“I shall arrange for that next year. She knows her letters.”

“I’ll take her here and look after her.”

The keeper was startled, but he had long kept himself in hand in the presence of his sister.

“Thank you,” he paused slightly, “but I shall send her to the Biggleses’.”

Keturah, as if recalling the duties of hospitality, said, “Sit down. I’ll make a cup of tea. Do you like bread and jelly?”

The question was directed at Mermaid. The child had been eyeing the woman with attentiveness. Now she answered politely, though she did not smile:

“I’m fond of it.”

Keturah Smiley entered her pantry and emerged with a brown jar and a loaf. She cut two large slices, spread them, and set a teapot on the stove. She said no more until the tea was brewed. As she poured out two steaming cups of it she remarked, pushing one toward her brother:

“What I leave of Aunt Keturah’s property goes to you. As I am not a spendthrift, in the natural course of events I would leave you more than I inherited. If you die before me it goes to your children. It would go to her.”

John Smiley swallowed too hastily and burnt his throat.

“This is not a matter to discuss before Mermaid,” he said, shortly.

“I sent for her because I wanted to have a good look at her, and I wanted you to have her to look at while you choose,” Keturah rejoined. “At first I thought it would not go to an adopted child, and so did Judge Hollaby. But he looked it up and the wording of the will is such that he thinks it would. I said once, to him, that if you ever adopted a child I would give or throw away every cent of that money. I was a fool; I can be as big a fool sometimes as any one else, brother.” It was on the tip of her tongue to add “yourself included,” but she checked it.

“Now I’ve had a good look at her. You take a good look at her, too. I know you more than half hate me, but that’s neither here nor there. Let the girl live with me and go to school and you can adopt her if you like, and I’ll do all I can in reason for her. Send her here to live with the Biggleses, and I’ll keep my promise to Judge Hollaby!”The tight-lipped rather hard-visaged woman was determined, but she was curiously excited, too. Her rather flat chest rose and fell with her breath, and her breathing was almost audible in the stillness of the room. Mermaid, who had finished her slices of bread, looked with wonder, but with a childish gravity and apparently a suspension of judgment, at this strange woman. The little girl knew who she was: she was Dad’s sister, but evidently as unlike him as possible. Still, her Dad’s sister was entitled to respect and a certain deference, if not to affection. They were talking about money and Dad was angry. She had never seen him so angry, not even when her youngest uncle, Uncle Joe, had capsized the life boat in the surf.

John Smiley was indeed mad clear through. Only the presence of Mermaid restrained him. He stood up in all his height and placed himself squarely in front of his sister, his hands clenching and unclenching and clenching again.

“You can take your money, Keturah,” he said, rather slowly, “and give it away or throw it away, as you please. I don’t care what you do with it. But there are some things it won’t buy you!”

“I know money means nothing to you, John,” said Keturah, sarcastically, “but it might mean something to someone else. You’re forgetting her, John, you’re forgetting the girl. Money can’t buy me some things I want, maybe, and it can’t buy you some things you want, maybe; but it can buy her things she’ll want. You’ve no right to throw away her chance!”

Her brother, his eyes on the child, seemed just perceptibly to waver, and then he burst out:

“What’s at the bottom of this? What are you after?”

Keturah, calmed a little by the success of her argument, answered him:

“It might be just wanting to have a young and growing creature around me, John! It might be that I’m not the inhuman creature you take me for, that I’m sometimes lonely; that company would cheer me up; that I might even be a softer body than I’m generally considered to be if I had someone to talk to and listen to and work for and with! It might be all that, but I won’t tax your powers of belief, brother, by asking you to suppose so. No! The real reason is simply this—” her excitement returned and she appeared almost feminine in her rage—“that I am just human enough, and just woman enough, and just fool enough to hate having people say my own brother couldn’t trust his adopted daughter to live with me, and had to farm her out to Susan and Henry Biggles to care for!”

The keeper was impressed. There was no denying Keturah spoke the truth, so far as her own feeling was concerned. She, who cared nothing for the good will of her neighbours, for gossip, for backbiting, for well-earned dislike or worse, she, Keturah Smiley, with her grasping ways and her old clothes and her bitter tongue, had a streak of femininity—or plain humanity—left in her after all these years. She could still care for public opinion on some things. They might call her stingy, mean, heartless in many ways; they might laugh at her, sneer at her, and hate her for many things; but that they should hold her in contempt; that they should be able to say that her own brother would not trust her with his little girl—that she dreaded. The prospect of it cut her like a lash. She might not care what people said about her behaviour toward John Smiley’s wife, for John Smiley’s wife had run away and left him, taking their baby, and so had sealed her unworthiness. She would care what people said about her behaviour toward John Smiley’s daughter, whether a daughter of his own blood or a waif washed ashore from the ocean. She cared about that now and she would continue to care. John Smiley saw this and knew that he held a hostage for her good behaviour. While the feeling lasted, anyway.... He spoke gently:

“Mermaid, would you be willing to live with my sister here, and go to school?”

The child, with the soberness that was so unlike her usual mood, but that had been evident since she entered the house, looked straight at him and then straight at Keturah Smiley. She had gathered that a matter of importance was at stake. It might be that she could help her Dad in some way, doing this. She said clearly and gravely:“Yes, Dad.”

Keturah gave no demonstration of pleasure. She was not triumphant, but she seemed genuinely relieved. She looked at Mermaid with a stern sort of satisfaction, and said nothing.

As they left the house and headed for the bay Mermaid’s hand closed in a tight pressure over the keeper’s.

“You’ll come to see me as often as you are over, won’t you, Dad?” she asked him, anxiously.

His answer was to lift her in his arms and kiss her.

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