You're real well, I hope, Miss Howes.After bein' exposed the way you was last night I HOPE you haven't caught cold.You never can tell what'll follow a cold--with some people."Thankful was glad when the meal was over.She, too, was fearful that her cousin might have taken cold during the wet chill of the previous night.But Emily declared she was very well indeed; that the very sight of the sunlit sea through the dining-room windows had acted like a tonic.
"Good enough!" exclaimed Captain Obed, heartily."Then we ought to be gettin' a bigger dose of that tonic.Mrs.Barnes, if you and Miss Howes would like to walk over and have a look at that property of yours, now's as good a time as any to be doin' it.I'll go along with you if I won't be in the way."Thankful looked down rather doubtfully at the borrowed gown she was wearing, but Miss Parker came to the rescue by announcing that her guests' own garments must be dry by this time, they had been hanging by the stove all night.So, after the change had been made, the two left the Parker residence and took the foot-path at the top of the bluff.Captain Obed seemed at first rather uneasy.
"Hope I ain't hurryin' you too much," he said."I thought maybe it would be just as well to get out of sight of Hannah as quick as possible.She might take a notion to come with us.I thought sure Kenelm would, but he's gone on a cruise of his own somewheres.He hustled outdoor soon as breakfast was over."Emily burst out laughing."Excuse me, please," she said, "but I've been dying to do this for so long.That--that Miss Parker is the oddest person!"The captain grinned."Thinkin' about that 'diagram' yarn?" he asked."'Tis funny when you hear it the first four or five times.
Hannah Parker can get more wrong words in the right places than anybody I ever run across.She must have swallowed a dictionary some time or 'nother, but it ain't digested well, I'm afraid."Thankful laughed, too."You must find her pretty amusin', Cap'n Bangs," she said.
The captain shook his head."She's a reg'lar dime show," he observed.Then he added: "Only trouble with that kind of a show is it gets kind of tiresome when you have to set through it all winter.There! now you can see your property, Mrs.Barnes, and ten mile either side of it.Look's some more lifelike and cheerful than it did last night, don't it?"It most assuredly did.They had reached the summit of a little hill and before and behind and beneath them was a view of shore and sea that caused Emily to utter an exclamation of delight.
"Oh!" she cried."WHAT a view! What a wonderful view!"Behind them, beyond the knoll upon which stood the little Parker house which they had just left, at the further side of the stretch of salt meadow with the creek and bridge, was East Wellmouth village.Along the white sand of the beach, now garlanded with lines of fresh seaweed torn up and washed ashore by the gale, were scattered a half dozen fishhouses, with dories and lobster pots before them, and at the rear of these began the gray and white huddle of houses and stores, with two white church spires and the belfry of the schoolhouse rising above their roofs.
At their right, only a few yards from the foot-path where they stood, the high sand bluff broke sharply down to the beach and the sea.The great waves, tossing their white plumes on high, came marching majestically in, to trip, topple and fall, one after the other, in roaring, hissing Niagaras upon the shore.Over their raveled crests the gulls dipped and soared.The air was clear, the breeze keen and refreshing and the salty smell of the torn seaweed rose to the nostrils of the watchers.
To the left were barren hills, dotted with scrub, and farther on the pine groves, with the road from Wellmouth Centre winding out from their midst.
All these things Thankful and Emily noticed, but it was on the prospect directly ahead that their interest centered.For there, upon the slope of the next knoll stood the "property" they had come to see and to which they had been introduced in such an odd fashion.
Seen by daylight and in the glorious sunshine the old Barnes house did look, as their guide said, more "lifelike and cheerful." Abig, rambling, gray-gabled affair, of colonial pattern, a large yard before it and a larger one behind, the tumble-down shed in which General Jackson had been tethered, a large barn, also rather tumble-down, with henhouses and corncribs beside it and attached to it in haphazard fashion.In the front yard were overgrown clusters of lilac and rose bushes and, behind the barn, was the stubble of a departed garden.Thankful looked at all these.
"So that's it," she said.
"That's it," said Captain Obed."What do you think of it?""Humph! Well, there's enough of it, anyhow, as the little boy said about the spring medicine.What do you think, Emily?"Emily's answer was prompt and emphatic.
"I like it," she declared."It looks so different this morning.
Last night it seemed lonesome and pokey and horrid, but now it is almost inviting.Think what it must be in the spring and summer.
