CHAPTER XIV

A VARIETY OF HAPPENINGS

Ralph remained at the lighthouse and did justice to the fishcakes. Miss Heppy was "all in a stew," as Tobias said, over the sudden departure of the boarder.

"I'm fair troubled that he wasn't satisfied with our table," the good woman said. "Fishballs and brown loaf and clam chowder and johnnycake and baked beans Saturday night and Sundays, is pretty tryin', I do allow, to them as ain't used to it. We never do have a piece of fresh meat."

"Oh, sugar!" chuckled Tobias. "Don't belittle your fodder, Heppy. You air a mighty good cook as fur as you go. If you had all kinds of fancy doo-dads you wouldn't know how to cook 'em, you know you wouldn't."

"What do you s'pose cookbooks was made for, Tobias Bassett?" demanded Miss Heppy.

"I cal'late they make good pipe-lights," rejoined her brother, suiting his action to his word as he stood at the mantel after supper and rolled himself a spill of a page of the culinary guide in question. "Come, Ralph, le's go up and see if the light is burning bright. 'You in your small corner, an' I in mine.' That allus seemed a cheerful sort o' hymn to me.

"Huh!" he added. "Got your own little packet of coffin-nails? That Degger feller was always havin' one o' them things stuck in a corner of his mouth."

Ralph promptly threw away the cigarette and filled his pipe from Tobias's sack of tobacco. The lightkeeper led the way, chuckling. When they reached the lamp room the old man turned a curious eye on his young friend and bluntly demanded:

"Tell us all about it, Ralphie. I see the mention of our ex-boarder stirred you up. What made him in such a hurry to leave us?"

"Don't tell Miss Heppy," begged Ralph, "but I guess it is my fault that she's lost her boarder."

"You ought to have a leather medal for bringing it about," declared Tobias. "I certain sure was glad to see him go. What happened? He and Lorny got out in my boat while I was asleep. I can't be about and stirrin' to watch the weather for 'em _all_ the time."

Ralph briefly narrated the adventure while Tobias listened, puffing at his pipe and nodding his head.

"I cal'late Lorny's got something to thank you for, then?" he suggested.

Ralph laughed harshly.

"You saw how she acted when we came ashore. Did she seem overpoweringly grateful?"

"Oh, sugar!" chuckled Tobias. "What chance did you give her to fall on your neck and tell you how much she thought of you?"

"Now, Tobias Bassett! I don't want any girl to fall on my neck. Least of all Lorna Nicholet."

"Ain't ready yet to sacrifice yourself' for the good of her family?"

"I won't see a fellow like Conway Degger fool her," growled Ralph. "I will break up his game all right. But I tell you Lorna would not marry me on a bet."

"Oh, sugar! She's something of a sport, Lorny is. I cal'late you ain't ever made her that proposition?"

"Really, I don't have to wait for a ton of coal to fall on me to take a hint," Ralph said, but looking away from the amused lightkeeper.

"No? I dunno 'bout that," muttered Tobias, who found his matchmaking with this rather dense young fellow somewhat uphill work. "I'd like to see Lorny get a good fellow with as much money as you've got, Ralph, and almost as much sense."

"Huh!"

"And that Degger don't fill the bill."

"If he doesn't let her alone----"

"Yep. That's all right. But in removing him from the scene you don't give Lorny no other play-toy. And she's been used to having a chap at her beck an' call all of the time. You know that."

"But, Tobias! She doesn't want me. She has shown plainly enough that she cares nothing for me."

"Oh, sugar! I don't see how it is that you young fellers understand so little about womenfolks."

"To hear you talk! And you not even married!"

"That's why," rejoined Tobias slyly. "I cal'late I understand 'em too well. Now, s'posin' Lorna was a gal you'd just met and you was stuck on her? S'posin' you wanted to make a good impression on her--eh? How would you go about it? S'posin' you was really fallin' in love with Lorny?"

Ralph slowly flushed. The smoke from his pipe choked him--or seemed to. He coughed and turned from Tobias again.

Actually he was seeing in his mind's vision a tiny, milk-white, blue-veined foot sticking out of the leg of a pair of oilcloth overalls.

But Lorna Nicholet possessed dignity, too. Nor did she have always to wait on the ruffling of her temper to show it.

Miss Ida chanced to suffer an infrequent headache on this evening and there were guests at dinner, although it was quite an informal affair. An hour after she had run barefooted and in Ralph's suit of oilskins, along the beach and up the path to the house on Clay Head, Lorna, in a perfect dinner toilet, slipped into the seat at the head of the table after her father and his guests were seated.

There are raveled edges at every dinner to be hemmed. The perfectly served meal is usually the one over which the hostess has worried her nerves to the raw. There was a new maid--of the usual kind one gets at the seashore--and Lorna was obliged to cover her deficiencies and carry on at the same time a spirited conversation with the women guests.

The men were seated at her father's end of the table, and Lorna sensed early in the meal that this was a semi-business gathering. The wives had been brought along to make the occasion seem less like a board-room wrangle.

Now and then Lorna heard a few words of the business discussion that went steadily on from cherry-stone clams to black coffee, like an organ accompaniment to the chatter of feminine voices.

"But we can't count on Endicott."

"What is the matter with the fellow? He was strong for the proposition a year ago."

"Usually Henry Endicott will at least listen to plans for a public improvement."

"Wrapped in some new invention, like enough."

"Those experiments of his must cost him a pretty penny."

"And they bring in no dividends," was the conclusion of John Nicholet.

It was these observations coming to her ear that caused Lorna to seek her father in his den after the guests were gone. She rustled in and perched herself upon the broad arm of his smoking chair and set, as usual, a moist kiss upon the apex of his bald crown.

"A very satisfactory evening--yes, very satisfactory," said John Nicholet. "Let me see. Where was your aunt, child?"

"Headache, daddy. I believe that is more often than not a feminine excuse for escaping a dry-as-dust dinner. I don't blame Aunt Ida. I do think that your business friends' wives are the most unentertaining people!"

"Bless us! Are they? I had no idea. Really, pet, it was a business conference."

"So I gathered," Lorna said. "What was it all about, daddy?"

"Just a scheme for making two dollars grow where only one grew before. And I think it will succeed."

"Without Professor Endicott's cooperation?" she asked.

"Bless us! Do you--ah, you 'listened in,' rogue!" he accused, shaking an admonishing finger at her. "Keep a still tongue about it, please, for the present."

"Surely. But I was interested----"

"Of course. Of course," said her father. "Especially when you heard the name of Endicott. If your Ralph had any money of his own (which he hasn't, for it is all tied up in trust funds, I understand) I would let him in on this instead of his Uncle Henry."

Lorna had gone red and looked vexed at his mention of "her Ralph." But she was still curious.

"I suppose Professor Endicott really manages the whole Endicott estate, daddy?"

"Oh, yes. It is all in his hands. And I do not understand when we offer him such a bang-up investment why he doesn't come in."

"Could it be possible that he is short of funds, daddy?"

"Of ready cash, you mean? Why, I have always understood that the Endicott securities were so placed that they brought in a continual stream of dividends. Conservative in the extreme, yet safe investments. Otherwise, how has Henry managed to run that family in such an extravagant way and to pour money into his experiments as well?"

"Couldn't that be the very reason why he does not enter into this investment that you have offered him?" ventured Lorna. "Perhaps the Endicott fortune is depleted to such an extent that he has no surplus for investment."

"Bless us! Do you know that to be a fact, daughter?"

"I do not know anything about it. It may be only gossip. But it is reported that Professor Endicott has wasted the family fortune."

"Dear me! You don't mean that, Lorna? That would be a catastrophe. What does Ralph say about it?"

"I have never spoken to Ralph about such matters," said Lorna, a little stiffly.

"No, no. I presume not. Such a sordid thing as money does not interest you youngsters. And in any case, if Ralph didn't have a penny to bless himself with, we can be thankful that your money is well placed and you and he need not worry."

Lorna got off the arm of the chair quickly. She stamped her foot.

"Daddy, I tell you I have no intention of marrying Ralph Endicott!"

"Bless us!" gasped her father. "If Henry has made ducks and drakes of their money and Ralph hasn't a penny, who will marry the boy if you don't?"

Amos Pickering waved a flabby hand to attract the attention of the lightkeeper while yet the monster-headed horse was a long way from Miss Heppy's flower-beds where Tobias was sunning himself with his pipe.

"Here comes the _Daily Bladder_," remarked Tobias, speaking to his sister, who was inside the lighthouse. "Now we'll l'arn whose punkin is the biggest."

He arose slowly from his seat and went down the sandy slope to the road. Amos had a paper for the lightkeeper, but he was bursting with news himself.

"Ye ain't got no boarder no more, I understand, Tobias," the rural mail carrier began.

"You understand correct," agreed Tobias, biting on his pipe stem. "An' I give it as my opinion that Heppy maybe just about broke even on his board--if anybody should drive up and ax ye, Amos."

But the mail carrier brushed this financial consideration aside. There was the canker of gossip eating on his inquiring mind, and he blurted out the subject at once:

"I didn't just know whether you run that feller out, Tobe, or whether 'twas his fight with Ralph Endicott that sent him kitin'."

"His fight with Ralph?" questioned Tobias with pursed lips. "Did they fight?"

"So I'm told. Didn't you hear about it?" asked the eager Amos.

"Not as I know of."

"Why, so they tell me down to Little Trillion. Over that Nicholet gal. You know, Tobias, she's been playin' fast and loose with them two fellers all summer."

"No. I didn't know that, neither," declared the lightkeeper, puffing more rapidly on his pipe.

"Wal, now, you know, Tobe, she's got them two fellers on her string. It come to a head, they tell me, an' Endicott licked this Degger to a fare-ye-well, put him ashore at the Lower Trillion life saving station, and sailed away with the gal on that motor-boat of his'n. They tell me they was gone all night, nobody knows where--heh?"

For Tobias had dropped his pipe and his eyes suddenly blazed.

"I know all about that, Amos," he said sternly.

"Ye do? I thought ye didn't."

"I know it ain't so. Ralph went out after Lorna and that Degger in his motor-boat when they was in danger of being drowned as dead as Pharaoh's hosts. He put Degger ashore at Lower Trillion 'cause the feller was scare't. He brought Lorna back here less'n an hour after Degger arrived in Zeke Bassett's car. That's the truth on it. Who's tellin' this dirty story about town, anyway?"

"Wal, now, Tobias, mebbe it is nothin' but a pack o' lies. They was a-tellin' of it at the post-office. That Degger is stoppin' at the Inn. He an' a feller named Lon Burtwell. Mebbe you've seed him about town, off an' on, this summer?"

"Go on," said Tobias, ruefully scrutinizing the broken pipe he had picked up.

"An' they said that Degger said he'd had a row with Endicott. He said Endicott had sailed away with the gal. Intimated mebbe they'd _e_-loped. Degger said Endicott did just that with another gal once, when he was at college. There was a scandal about it."

"And I can see there's some scandal about this," Tobias rejoined reflectively. "Wal, Amos, dates is dates, and you can't fool the clock. I met Ralph and Lorny when they come ashore, and it was just in the shanks of the evening, 'fore supper.

"I don't reckon Ralph ever laid his hand on that Degger yet; but if he hears this story I shouldn't be surprised if there was a ruction. I knowed that Degger didn't have no more morals than a clam worm."