Tobias o' the Light. James A. Cooper
I will say that if I had to catch such a throw as Lorna Nicholet, I surely wouldn't make a muff of it!"
"That's all right," observed Endicott. "I'm not saying she isn't a nice enough girl. But I don't believe she really wants me any more than I want her. In fact, I know there was another fellow last year that she was interested in. A chap named Conny Degger. He was in my class at college. Kind of a sport, but I guess he's all right, at that. But Lorna's Aunt Ida broke it up. Wouldn't let Conny shine around Lorna any more when she learned about it.
"They've got us both thrown and tied, Tobias! That's the way Uncle Henry, and Aunt Ida, and all the rest of my family and Lorna's people have got us fixed. They act as though we'd just got to marry each other. And after this mischance—breaking down here in the snow—they'll all say we're disgraced forever if we don't announce the engagement."
"Oh, sugar!" said the lightkeeper again, puffing away placidly.
In the kitchen Lorna Nicholet was making a confidante of Miss Heppy quite as Ralph had trusted Tobias. Nor was the girl less determined to thwart the intention of her family in this matrimonial affair, than was Ralph in his attitude toward his relatives.
"For love's sake!" murmured the lightkeeper's sister, realizing at last how much in earnest the girl was, "Miss Ida'll near about have a conniption. She's set her heart on you an' Ralph marrying, for years."
"And his Uncle Henry is just as foolish," sighed Lorna, wiping her eyes. "Why will old people never have sense enough to let young people's affairs alone?"
"Well, now, as you might say," Miss Heppy observed, "Miss Ida and Henry Endicott ain't re'lly old. Forty-odd ain't what ye might call aged—not in a way of speaking. But I cal'late they are some sot in their ways."
"'Some sot' is right, Miss Heppy," repeated Lorna, suddenly giggling and her vivid face a-smile once more. "In her own case Aunt Ida is a misogamist; yet she urges marriage on me. And Ralph's Uncle Henry is a misogynist in any case. Why he is so anxious to force Ralph into the wedded state I do not see."
"Seems to me them air purty hard names to call your aunt and Henry Endicott," murmured Miss Heppy.
"Oh!" Lorna laughed again. "They just mean that Aunt Ida hates marriage and Uncle Henry hates women."
Miss Heppy waggled a doubtful head.
"They wasn't like that when I first remember them, Lorny," she said. "Miss Ida Nicholet is a fine looking woman now. She was a pretty sight for anybody's eyes when she was your age, or thereabout."
"I know she was quite a belle when she was young," Lorna agreed, rather carelessly.
"And Henry Endicott wasn't any—what did you call him jest now?"
"A misogynist—a hater of women."
"He didn't hate 'em none when he come here that first summer," said Miss Heppy, with a reflective smile. "He was a young professor at some college then. I expect he didn't know as much about inventing things then as what he does now. But he knowed more how to please women. He pleased your Aunt Ida right well, I cal'late."
"Never! You don't mean it, Miss Heppy!" exclaimed Lorna, sensing a romance.
"Yes, I thought then Miss Ida and Henry Endicott would make a match of it. But somehow—well, such things don't always go the way you expect them to. Both your aunt and Professor Endicott were high-strung—same's you and Ralph be, Lorny."
"Why," cried the girl smiling again, "I'd never fight with Ralph at all if they didn't try to make us marry. I wonder if it is so, that Aunt Ida and Ralph's uncle were once fond of each other! If they could not make a match of it, why are they so determined to force Ralph and me into a marriage?"
"Mebbe because they see their mistake," Miss Heppy said judiciously. "I don't believe your aunt and Henry Endicott have been any too happy endurin' these past twenty-odd years."
"Tell me!" urged the girl, her cheeks aglow and her eyes dancing. "Is remaining single all your life such a great cross, Miss Heppy? Are there not some compensations?"
The woman looked up from darning the big blue wool sock that could have fitted none but her brother's foot. The smile with which she favored the girl had much tenderness as well as retrospection in it.
"I don't believe that any woman over thirty is ever single from choice, Lorny. She may never find the man she wants to marry. Or something separates her from the one she is sure-'nough fitted to mate with. So, she must make the best of it."
"But you, Miss Heppy?" asked Lorna, boldly. "Why didn't you ever marry?"
"Why—I was cal'lating on doing so, when I was a gal," said the woman gently. "Listen!"
The girl, startled, looked all about the room and then back into Miss Heppy's softly smiling face.
"Do you hear it, Lorny? The sea a-roaring over the reef and the wind wailing about the light? That's my answer to your question. I seen so many women in my young days left lone and lorn because of that sea. Ah, my deary, 'tain't the men that go down to the sea in ships that suffer most. 'Tis their wives and mothers, and the little children they leave behind.
"When I was a young gal I never had a chance to meet ary men but them that airned their bread on the deep waters. My father was drowned off Hatteras, two brothers older than Tobias were of the crew of the windjammer, Seahawk. She never got around the Horn on her last v'y'ge. In seventeen homes about Clinkerport and Twin Rocks, the women mourned their dead on the Seahawk.
"No, no. I didn't stay single from choice. But I shut my ears and eyes to ary man that heard the call of the sea. And I never met no other, Lorny."
The uproar of the storm was an accompaniment to Miss Heppy's story. The solemnity of it quenched any further expression of what Lorna Nicholet considered her troubles. Within the kitchen there was silence for a space.
CHAPTER III
THE APEX OF THE STORM
Bedtime came, and Miss Heppy led Lorna, with the little whale oil hand lamp, up one flight of the spiral stairway and ushered her into the best bedroom. It was the whitewashed cell facing the ocean.
The waves boomed with sullen roar upon the rocks, breaking, it seemed, almost at the base of the lighthouse. Spray, as well as the sleet, dashed against the single unshuttered window. It was sheeted with white. But Miss Heppy drew the curtains close.
"You won't be afraid to sleep here alone, will you, child?" asked the lightkeeper's sister. "Tobias and I are only just across the landing. Though I guess Tobias will be up most o' the night watchin' the lamp, and he'll likely put your young man in his bed."
"I wish you wouldn't!" sighed Lorna. "He's not my young man, whatever else he may be. I here and now disown all part and parcel in Ralph Endicott."
"I dunno what Miss Ida will say," the woman observed mournfully. "It'll be a shock to her. Wal, try to sleep, deary, if the wintry winds do blow. I guess 'twill clear, come morning. These late winter storms never last."
She had shaken out a voluminous canton-flannel nightgown which she laid over the foot of the bed. Now she pricked up the two round wicks of the lamp with a pin, and after kissing the visitor left her to seek repose.
She heard a heavy step on the stair as she reached the foot of it, so held the kitchen door open for her brother. Tobias had left Ralph to watch the lamp while he came down on some small errand. Finding his sister alone, the lightkeeper lingered.
"I give it as my opinion, Heppy," he said, slowly puffing on his clay pipe, "that it was lucky