The Key Note. Burnham Clara Louise
only just heard this morning that you had come," he said. "Here's a peace offering." He lifted the two mackerel that were hanging from his hand.
"Beauties," vouchsafed Miss Burridge. "Are they cleaned?"
"Well, if you don't look a gift horse – "
"Well, now, I ain't goin' to clean 'em," said Miss Burridge doggedly. "I've been rubbed the wrong way ever since I landed – "
Philip laughed. "And you won't do it to them, eh? Well, I guess I can rub 'em the wrong way for you – " His unabashed eyes were still regarding Diana as impersonally as though they had both been children of five.
"Excuse me, I am obstructing the passage," said the girl, rising.
"This is Miss Diana Wilbur, Phil. I suppose you're Mr. Barrison now that you have sung in New York."
The young fellow bowed to the girl who acknowledged the greeting.
"What is the name of those beautiful creatures?" she asked with her usual gentle simplicity of manner.
"These? Oh, these are mackerel."
"Jewels of the deep, surely," she said.
"They are rather dressy," returned Philip.
Diana bathed him in the light of her serene brown gaze.
"I am so ignorant of the names of the denizens of the sea," she said. "I come from Philadelphia."
Philip returned her look with dancing stars in his eyes. "I'd have said Boston if you only wore eyeglasses."
"Oh, that is the humorous tradition, is it not?" she returned.
"Now, don't you drip 'em in here," said Miss Burridge, as the young fellow started to enter the kitchen door. "If you're really goin' to be clever and clean 'em, I'll give you the knife and everything right outdoors."
"Then I think I would better withdraw," said Diana hastily. "I cannot bear to see the mutilation of such a rich specimen of Nature's handiwork; but, oh, Mr. Barrison, not without one word concerning the heavenly song that floated across the field as you came. Miss Burridge calls you Phil; – 'Philomel with melody!' I should say. Au revoir. I will go down among the pebbles for a while."
She vanished, and Philip regarded Miss Burridge, who returned his gaze.
"Good night!" he said at last.
"Sh! Sh!" warned Miss Priscilla, and tiptoed across the kitchen. When she had looked from a window and seen her boarder's sweater and tam proceeding among the grassy hummocks toward the sea, she returned, bringing out the materials for Philip's operations on the fish.
"I'll bring a rhetoric instead of finny denizens of the deep, the next time I come," he continued, settling to his job.
Miss Priscilla took her boarder's deserted seat on the doorstep.
"Going to open a young ladies' seminary here, and got the teacher all secured?"
"Nothing of the kind, Phil, and there's only one explanation of her," declared Miss Priscilla impressively. "You've been in art galleries and seen these statues of Venus and Apollo and all that tribe?"
"I have."
"Well, sir, all I can think of is that one o' their Dianas got down off her perch some dark night, and managed to get hold o' some girl clothes, and came here to this island. She says she has come to recuperate from unwise vigils caused by vaulting ambition at school. I said it over to myself till I learned it."
"I should say her trouble might be indigestion from devouring dictionaries," remarked Philip.
"Well, anyway, she's a sweet girl and it's all as natural as breathing to her. At first I accused her in my own mind of affectation, but, there! she hasn't got an affected bone in her body, and she's willin' and simple as a child. You'd ought to 'a' seen her luggin' water up the hill for me this mornin'. That reminds me. You promised to give me a lift this summer when I needed it."
"At so much a lift," remarked Philip.
"Of course. Well, the first thing I want you to do is to get the carpenter and the plumber and knock their heads together, and then bring 'em here, one in each hand, so's I can have my house ready when the folks come. Why, my new stove ain't even put up. Mr. Buell, the plumber, promised me faithful he'd come this mornin'. I'm cookin' on an old kerosene stove there was here and managin' to keep Miss Wilbur from sheer starvation."
"Miss Wilbur? Is that the fair Diana? Where did you get the 'old master'? Did she find you waiting when she got off the pedestal?"
"No, I found her waiting. She came to the island on a misunderstandin'. There wasn't any one ready so early in the season to make strangers comfortable, and it seems she took a fancy to this place and I found her here sittin' on the steps when I arrived. She said she had been on the island a week and had walked up to this piazza every pleasant day, and she'd like to live here."
"Did she really say it as plain as that?"
"Well – I don't suppose those were her exact words, but she made me understand that she was willin' to come right in for better or for worse just so's she could have a room up there in front where the dawn – yes, she said something about the dawn, I forget whether it was purple or rosy – "
"Mottled, perhaps," suggested Philip.
"Well, anyway, I told her the dawn came awful early in the day this part o' the year, and that probably she'd be better satisfied in one o' the back rooms; but she was firm on the dawn, so she's got it. But I draw the line at her gettin' midnight shower-baths, and that's what she will get if that wretch of a Matt Blake don't get here before the next storm and put on the shingles."
"And I have to tell the plumber that you have to 'haul water' too. Is that it? The well is some little distance. Rather hard on the statue, wasn't it, to do the hauling? She'll wish she'd stayed in the gallery. I'll bring in a lot before I go."
"Don't go, Philip," begged Miss Priscilla. "Supposin' you don't go, not till you can leave me whole-footed. The men'll come sooner and work better if they know there's a man here. Your grandma won't care if her visit's interrupted for a little while. I'll feed you with your own mackerel and you can bet I know how to cook 'em."
"Do you think Matt Blake realizes that I'm a man?" The teeth Philip showed in his smile were an asset for a singer. "He helped teach me to walk, you know."
"Well, now, you teach him" retorted Miss Priscilla. "Show him how to walk in this direction. I don't want to make a fizzle of this thing. I found there wa'n't anybody goin' to run the place this summer, so I thought it might be a good job for me. I never took a thought that it was goin' to be so hard to get help. They tell me there ain't any servants any more; and there are enough folks writin' for rooms to fill me up entirely. I can do the cookin' myself – "
"Now, Miss Burridge, you aren't leading up to asking me to put on an apron and wait on table, are you? You must remember I'm recuperating also from a too vaulting ambition."
"Recuperatin', nothin'! You're the huskiest-lookin' thing I ever saw. No, I ain't goin' to ask you to wait on table; but I've got an idea. We're too out o' the way here for me to get college boys. They'd rather go to the mountains and so on – fashionable resorts. But I've got a niece, if she don't feel too big of herself to do that sort of thing; she might come. I'm goin' to ask her anyway. I haven't seen her for years 'cause her mother's been gone a long time and her father went out to Jersey to live, but I've no doubt she's a nice girl. Her name's Veronica. Isn't that a beater? I told my sister I couldn't see why she didn't name her Japonica and be done with it."
"It's the name of a saint," remarked Philip.
"Well, I hope she's enough of one to come and help me out. I'm goin' to ask her."
"Better get Miss Wilbur to write her about the rosy dawn and the jeweled denizens. I'm afraid you'll be too truthful and tell about the leaks. With an 'old master' and a saint, you ought to get on swimmingly."
"Well, will you stay with me a few days?" said Miss Priscilla coaxingly. "If I had a rapscallion to add to the menagerie – "
"Do you mean