CHAPTER VIII

PHILOSOPHY AND OTHER THINGS

Tobias Bassett was a social soul and the "boarder," as he insisted upon calling the young man he had rescued from the motor-boat, was not tongue-tied. Get Degger set on a course, as Tobias termed it, relating to his own exploits, and the young fellow became more than voluble.

The lightkeeper and Miss Heppy certainly were surprised to learn that their visitor was acquainted with the Nicholets.

"You don't mean to tell me that that is the Nicholets' summer home up on that bluff? That first one yonder?" said the young man.

"That's it," replied Tobias, sitting on the bench beside the lighthouse door to smoke an after-supper pipe. "I see the storm shutters are down. They'll be coming soon, I cal'late."

"And Miss Lorna comes here every summer? A charming girl."

Tobias looked at him fixedly.

"I don't suppose you'd be knowing Ralph Endicott? The Endicotts will occupy the house next to the Nicholets."

"The Endicotts of Amperly?"

"Them's the ones. Ralph is the one I mean. Feller 'bout your age, mebbe."

"If it is the Ralph Endicott I know," said Degger, the expression of his face changing, "he and I were at Harvard together."

"You don't say!" Tobias's eyes twinkled. The reason for the familiar sound of the boarder's name was suddenly explained. This was the "Conny Degger" Ralph had spoken of, for whose society Lorna had once shown a penchant. "I cal'late you know Ralph pretty well, then?" insinuated the lightkeeper.

"Oh, I was never chummy with Ralph Endicott," Degger observed. "He and I were scarcely in the same set." Which was strictly true. Nobody could doubt it. Then he verged on rather thin ice: "You see, Ralph's kind are high-flyers." He dropped his voice a notch and glanced around to make sure that Miss Heppy was not within hearing. "Fellows like Ralph Endicott don't go to college altogether to study."

"I give it as my opinion," admitted Tobias, placidly smoking, "that some of 'em go mostly to learn about the breeds o' bulldogs--both pipes and canine. And they study how to play cards, and to dress as fancy as a nigger minstrel. I've seen some of that kind. But Ralph----"

"No. He did not run to those foibles, I believe. But there was a girl--well, you know how it is with some fellows, Skipper. Every pretty face attracts them, and there are plenty of girls of light ideas in every college town. Cambridge is no exception."

"Oh, sugar!" ejaculated the lightkeeper. "I wouldn't think it of Ralph."

"Sly boy!" chuckled Conny Degger grinning. "Guess his folks never knew much about it. They are straight-laced, I fancy. But he was seen a good deal with Cora Devine--and she was not all she should be."

"Oh, sugar!" exclaimed Tobias again. "Maybe 'twas only a boy and girl flirtation."

"_She_ was no innocent kid. Believe me, Skipper, that Devine girl knew her way about. Why, I was told she'd been trooping with a burlesque show. Ralph Endicott made a perfect jack of himself over her. It was even rumored that they ran off and were married once when he was half-stewed."

Tobias jumped on the bench and uttered a startled exclamation.

"What is the matter, Skipper?"

"Must o' been one of them pesky sandfleas," muttered the lightkeeper. "Wal, go on with your tale o' crime."

"Ha! Ha! No crime about it. Just Endicott's foolishness. If he did marry her, I'm sorry for him. She'll be bobbing up to confront him later. Such girls always do. They are expensive trimmings to a fellow's college career."

"I cal'late," agreed Tobias, more calmly.

But later he sounded Heppy on a topic which he had not touched upon since back in the late winter when Lorna and Ralph had been stormbound at the light.

"Didn't Lorny say something to you about Ralph paying 'tentions to some gal at college? Wasn't she some worked up about it?"

"For love's sake, Tobias, she never spoke as though she'd feel jealous any if Ralph Endicott had forty girls! I should say not! She did mention that Ralph had some love affair when he was at school. But she called it puppy love," concluded Miss Heppy, with a sniff.

"Humph! Sort o' scorned it, did she? It didn't seem to worry her none?"

"Worry her? I should say not! But I guess 'twas only gossip at that. I don't believe Ralph Endicott is the sort of a boy to play fast and loose with any girl."

"Does seem as though we feel about alike on that score, Heppy," reflected her brother. "Ralph, it strikes me, is purt' sound timber. But I wonder, now, where Lorna Nicholet got her information about Ralph's chasing around after that chorus gal? Does seem as though such a story _might_ be one o' the things that makes Lorna so determined to cut Ralph adrift. Oh, sugar!"

But these final reflections of the lightkeeper were inaudible. He had by no means lost interest in his matchmaking intrigue regarding the two young people who he was convinced were "jest about made for each other."

His scheme--if scheme he had--had been in abeyance all these weeks. Now that the families of the young people were about to take up their residence on the Clay Head, he proposed to enter upon a more active campaign for what he believed to be the happiness of all concerned.

Not alone was Miss Heppy aware of the long-past bond of affection between Miss Ida Nicholet and Ralph's Uncle Henry. Tobias Bassett had been just as observant as his sister--or anybody else.

Like others, he had wondered twenty years before why the then young Professor Endicott had not pursued with more vigor the charming, if independent, Ida Nicholet, and made her his bride. _There_ was a romance nipped in the bud which Tobias always felt he might have mended--"if he'd put his mind to it."

In any case he determined not to see the ship of Ralph and Lorna's happiness cast on the rocks if he could help it. He felt that it might be within his power to avert such disaster. The strategic yeast of the true matchmaker began to stir within him.

"Miss Ida," as everybody called Lorna's assertive aunt, could not be long in any place without making her presence felt. Her original and independent character never failed to make its impress upon all domestic, as well as other, affairs. The Nicholet menage was run like clockwork. Miss Ida was the clock. Everything at the big house on Clay Head was soon working smoothly, and Miss Ida could look about.

She was a tall, free-striding, graceful woman without a gray thread in her abundant dark hair. She piled that hair low at the back of her head, and her neck and throat were like milk, and flawless.

When she came across the barrens under her rose-tinted parasol to see Miss Heppy at the Light, her plain morning dress was arranged as carefully as a ball gown would be on another woman. In addition, her pleasant eyes and round, firm chin, together with her Junoesque figure, made her appearance most attractive.

"Well, Heppy, how do you do?" she asked, her voice mellow and full. "How has the winter gone with you?"

"'Bout the same as usual, Miss Ida," the lightkeeper's sister replied. "You _be_ a pretty sight. None o' the young ones can put anything over you, Miss Ida. You ain't got a wrinkle or a fleck of gray in your head."

Miss Ida laughed. "I'm forty-two. I'm frank to admit it. Why shouldn't a woman be well preserved and in good health at my age if she has never made herself a slave to some man?"

"For love's sake! As for _that_, I ain't never been married. But look at my wrinkles!"

"Those are creases, not wrinkles, in your case, Heppy," laughed the visitor. "You are getting too fat. And you have been practically a slave for Tobias."

"Sure she has," agreed the lightkeeper grinning. "I've been thinking of putting a nose-ring on her. She's abused, all right."

"You hush, Tobias! I ain't slaved for nobody _but_ him, Miss Ida," declared Hephzibah warmly. "While you, Miss Ida, have shouldered the responsibility for your brother and all his family. If you'd married," added the longshore woman wisely, "like enough you wouldn't have had nowhere near so big a family to care for."

"I wonder?" laughed the other woman. Yet her expressive countenance became immediately serious. "My family is pretty well grown now, Heppy. I am sure even Lorna is old enough to make a nest for herself. She has been out two years."

"Out o' what?" Tobias asked, taking the pipe from his mouth and staring. "Looks to me as though she was well supplied with most everything a young gal ought to have, an' wasn't out o' nothing."

"I mean she has been in society two years."

"Oh, sugar! That's a case, is it, of when you're _out_, you're _in_?" chuckled the lightkeeper. "I give it as my opinion that the only thing Lorny lacks is a good husband."

Miss Ida flushed softly. "I hope she will see the advisability of choosing wisely in that matter," the aunt said, speaking intimately to these two old friends, at the expression of whose interest in her family affairs she was far too sensible to take offence.

"Yes," she pursued. "You know what hopes her father and I have for her. An eminently fitting alliance. And Ralph is a manly fellow. It does seem as though those two were quite made for each other."

"Humph! Yes. 'Twould seem so," muttered Tobias. "But it does appear sometimes as though the very things that _ought_ to be don't somehow come around to happen."

"You are a philosopher, Tobias."

"Dunno as that's a compliment, Miss Ida," rejoined the lightkeeper, his eyes twinkling. "I got all my wits about me yet, and most of them philosophers you hear tell about ain't. They get on some hobby and ride it to death. And a man ain't really broad-minded unless he can see both sides to a question.

"Now, takin' the chances for and against your Lorna and Ralph Endicott marryin'. What would you say, Miss Ida, was the one best bet?"

He looked up at her shrewdly, holding his pipe with that familiar gesture of his. Miss Ida's gravity grew more profound.

"I believe you and Heppy must know that of late my niece and Ralph have seemed to fret one another?" she queried.

"They give themselves away some when they stopped over here that time they got stalled in Ralph's car," admitted Tobias. "Warn't it jest a leetle spat?"

"I am afraid not. They have not seemed the same since. And I am afraid it is Lorna's fault," sighed Miss Ida. "She is so hot-tempered. I have warned her. The families have never considered any other possible outcome but an alliance between Lorna and Ralph. I have told her so."

"I cal'late you have," murmured Tobias softly, pulling on his pipe again.

"When she returns from New York--as she will in a day or two--I shall put the matter to her very strongly. If you and Heppy have noticed their drifting asunder, other people must have noticed it too. The Nicholets would be utterly disgraced if it were said that Ralph Endicott--er--dropped Lorna. And if he should, I fear it will be my niece's own fault."

When she was gone Tobias snorted suddenly.

"Oh, sugar!" he said. "If I scorch 'em a mite graced, I want to know, when Miss Ida's love affair with Professor Endicott busted up? Seems to me that leetle gal, Lorny, is going to be put upon by her folks. _That_ won't do."

"Now, do try to mind your own business, Tobias," advised his sister, comfortably rocking. "I know it will be hard for you to do so. But you'll burn your fingers, like enough, if you don't."

The lightkeeper spread out his gnarled, work-blunted fingers to observe them reflectively.

"Oh, sugar!" he said. "If I scorch 'em a mite helping that leetle gal and Ralph Endicott out o' their muss, what's the odds, Heppy? You know, we're put here to help each other."

"That is what most folks say that have an itch for minding other people's business. Now, you have a care what you do, Tobias Bassett."