The Key Note. Burnham Clara Louise
boy regarded her, and in the surprise of being really challenged to think, he meditated.
"No," he said, at last. "I've never been here before."
"Isn't it a beautiful place?" asked Mrs. Lowell.
"I don't know," returned the boy after a hesitation. Then he looked down on the grass at Philip.
"Do you want to go back and watch Mr. Barrison paint?"
"Yes."
"All right. Run along. We'll talk some other time."
The boy rose and shuffled across the porch and down the steps.
"Mrs. Lowell, it is heart-breaking!" exclaimed Diana softly.
Her companion nodded.
"The situation is incomprehensible," said Diana. "It seems as if Mr. Gayne had some ulterior design which impelled him to stultify any outcropping of intelligence in his nephew. Have you not observed it from the moment of their arrival?"
"Yes, and before we arrived. I noticed them on the train."
"If there's anything I can't bear to have around, it's an idiot," said Miss Emerson. "It gives me the creeps. If he hangs about much, I shall complain to Miss Burridge."
The sweep of the ocean and the rush of the wind made her remark inaudible beyond the piazza. Mrs. Lowell turned to her.
"I think we all have a mission right there, perhaps, Miss Emerson. The boy is not an idiot. I have observed him closely enough to be convinced of that. He is a plant in a dark cellar, and I wonder how many years he has been there. His uncle's methods turn him into an automaton. If you keep your arm in a sling a few weeks you know it loses its power to act. The boy's brain seems to have been treated the same way. His uncle's every word holds the law over him that he cannot think, or reason, and that he is the stupidest creature living."
"That is true," said Diana. "That is just what he does."
Miss Emerson sniffed. "Well, I didn't come up to Maine on a mission. I came to rest, and I don't propose to have that gawk prowling around where I am."
Nicholas Gayne appeared, his binoculars in his hand. "Would you ladies like to look at the shipping?" he said, approaching. His manner was ingratiating, and Diana conquered the resentment filling her heart sufficiently to accept the glasses from his hand. He was conscious that he had not made a good impression. "The mackerel boats are going out to sea after yesterday's storm," he remarked. "You will see how wonderfully near you can bring them."
Diana adjusted the glass and exclaimed over its power. Miss Emerson jumped up from her chair.
"That's something I want to see," she said, and Diana handed her the glass while Nicholas Gayne scowled at the spinster's brown "transformation." He was not desirous of propitiating Miss Emerson, who, however, pressed him into the service of helping her adjust the screws to suit her eyes, and was effusive in her appreciation of the effect.
"You surely are a benefactor, Mr. Gayne," she said at last, with enthusiasm.
"Let me be a benefactor to Mrs. Lowell, too," he returned, and the lady yielded up the glass.
"That is the great Penguin Light beyond Crag Island," he said, as Mrs. Lowell accepted the binoculars. "The trees hide it in the daytime, it is so distant, but at night you will see it flash out."
"It is so interesting that you are familiar here, Mr. Gayne," said Miss Emerson. "You must tell us all about the island and show us the prettiest places."
The owner of the binoculars stirred restlessly under the appealing smile the lady was bestowing upon him.
"For myself, I just love to walk," she added suggestively.
"I don't do much walking," he returned shortly. "I come here to sketch."
"Oh, an artist!" exclaimed Miss Emerson, clasping her hands in the extremity of her delight. "Do you allow any one to watch you work? Such a pleasure as it would be."
"It isn't, though," said Nicholas Gayne with an uncomfortable side-glance at his admirer. "My daubs aren't worth watching."
"Oh, that will do for you to say," she returned archly. "I have done some sketching myself. Perhaps I could persuade you to take a pupil."
"Nothing doing," returned the artist hastily. "We all come up here to rest, don't we?" he added.
"Oh, I suppose so," sighed Miss Emerson. "But I do hope you will give me the great pleasure of seeing your work sometime." She sank back into her chair with a sigh.
"That is a very fine glass," remarked Mrs. Lowell as she returned it to its owner. His brow cleared as he received it.
"Well, I must be off," he said. "I mustn't waste time under these favoring skies."
"Oh, Miss Wilbur," said Miss Emerson, addressing the young girl. "Wouldn't it be lovely if Mr. Gayne would let us go with him and watch him sketch?"
"I am quite ignorant of his art," returned Diana, rising from her seat. "And I still have a great deal of exploring to do on my own account."
Nicholas Gayne cast an admiring glance at the statuesque lines of her face and figure.
"Perhaps you will let me make a sketch of you one of these days, Miss Wilbur." He approached the piazza rail as he spoke and his voice carried down to where Philip was painting under the eyes of the silent, watching boy.
Philip looked up, and, catching the expression with which Gayne seemed to be appraising the young girl, he ruined one of the n's in Inn so that it had to be painted out and done over.
Veronica, her duties finished for the time being, sallied out of doors and approaching Philip looked curiously at his work.
"There's nothing the matter with that," she said encouragingly, and the others came down from the piazza to praise the painter. Miss Emerson followed, but she looked at the sign doubtfully.
"One can't help being sensitive, can one?" she said to Gayne. "And the wind blows so hard all the time up here, I'm afraid that sign is going to squeak."
"Show me your window," said Philip good-naturedly, "and I'll see if we can't avoid it."
So they all went around to the back of the house where Philip had his ladder waiting and the sign was finally placed to the satisfaction of everybody except Miss Emerson, who considered it on probation.
Nicholas Gayne was still conscious that he had not made a pleasing impression in his treatment of his nephew and it was no part of his programme to attract attention. He approached the boy now.
"What are you going to do with yourself, Bert?"
"I don't know," was the answer.
"Want to come with me?"
"No, sir."
"Well, that's plain enough," said Gayne, laughing and looking around on the company.
"He's a very foolish boy," said Miss Emerson, "when he has an opportunity to watch you sketch."
"Oh, Mr. Gayne!" cried Veronica. "Don't go until you tell us about the haunted farm."
"Where did you ever hear about that?" asked the artist, looking with some favor on Veronica's round and dimpled personality. "I thought you were a stranger here."
"I am, but Genevieve Wilks has just been telling me that you really saw the spook."
Gayne laughed. "When I came up here last summer, I was told about the haunted farm, and, of course, I was interested in it at once. There are some particularly good views from there. So, naturally, I became one of the ha'nts myself and spent a lot of time with them."
"Oh, but tell us what it looked like," persisted Veronica. "Did you really think you saw one?"
"What a subject for this time of a clear, sunny day," said Gayne, lightly. "Wait until the thunder rolls some stormy night," and, lifting his cap, he hurried away through the field, his sketch-book under his arm.
Diana looked after his receding form.
"It is odd how little like an artist Mr. Gayne looks," she said.
"You