"Calvin's outdone himself," remarked Miss Martha. "He must have taken a great fancy to her."

"It looks that way," responded Thinkright.

"And you don't know what he could possibly mean by that poetical name, do you?"

"I haven't an idea," returned her companion, well pleased that such was the case, for he could see that otherwise it might go hard with him.

"And I daresay you're quite as bewitched with her as Calvin," pursued Miss Lacey curiously.

"I'm under her little thumb, but luckily she doesn't know it," was the reply.

"Well, I think it's high time I came over to get acquainted with her myself," remarked Miss Martha.

"High time, Martha," returned Thinkright, smiling. "It's high time you got in the game."

CHAPTER XVIII

HAWK ISLAND

An hour later Miss Martha had the escort of her niece down to the sh.o.r.e again. She peered about alertly for a sign of her boatman.

"Now I told Benny that I shouldn't fail"--she began with annoyance.

"Oh, there he is," for the top of the mast was visible beyond a farther jutting point of rock. "Benny!" she called. His hand appeared and waved a signal. "I suppose we shall have to go over there. I should like to know why he couldn't stay where I told him to. Benny," as they drew near enough to be heard, "you gave me a start for a minute. Why didn't you wait for me in that same place?"

Benny glanced toward Sylvia. "Thought yew mightn't care to squat on that rock all night," he drawled imperturbably.

"What do you mean? Oh--wasn't the tide right?"

"No; most likely it didn't hear what you said. Anyways, it didn't wait.

It kep' on a-goin' down jest the same."

Miss Martha's lips drew in. "You absurd boy. Benny, this is my niece, another Miss Lacey; and Sylvia, this is Benny Merritt. We couldn't get along without him at the island; and now we must fly. How's the wind, Benny?"

"Pretty good chance; we'll have to beat some."

"Well, you mustn't let the boat tip," responded Miss Martha, as she crept gingerly along the slippery rocks, and helped by Sylvia jumped in and took her seat. "Don't fall so in love with The Rosy Cloud that you can't come to see us, Sylvia, and do be careful with your new toy. It doesn't look much more substantial than a cloud to me. Benny, look _out_!" For the wind had seized the sail and flapped it noisily before it set firmly. The last words Sylvia caught were, "You are letting it tip now. You know I don't like it, Benny."

Sylvia laughed as she sprang up the bank. Even in this brief visit she had observed how habitually the uppermost thought in her aunt's mind effervesced into speech, and she saw how natural had been Miss Martha's lack of repression at Hotel Frisbie. She felt for Benny Merritt with his nervous pa.s.senger, but her sympathy was wasted. When Miss Lacey sailed alone with Benny she always kept up an intermittent stream of directions and suggestions to which the boy paid not the slightest attention.

"Doin' my best, Miss Marthy," he used to reply sometimes. "If ye say so I'll stop and let ye get out and walk."

Each time the boat had to come about for a new tack, necessitating the sail's pa.s.sing over Miss Martha's head, the air was vibrant with her small shrieks and louder suggestions; but to-day, every time they settled down for the smooth run, a pensiveness fell upon her.

"The Mill Farm is looking real prosperous, Benny," she remarked during one of these calms.

"I s'pose so," returned the boy. "More folks comin' to the islands every summer. More folks to want their truck."

"Seems to me," observed Miss Martha, "I used to hear that things weren't very pleasant between the mainland folks and the islanders."

"Used to be so. Hated each other, I've heard my father say, but sence I've been a-growin' up things have changed. We've ben findin' out that they wasn't all potato vines, and they've ben findin' out that we ain't all fish scales. My father says Thinkright Johnson's at the bottom o'

the change."

"Thinkright's a good man," returned Miss Martha, and with that she fell into pensive mood again until time for another acute moment of dodging the sail and coming about.

To think that in those few hours Judge Trent should have come to take such an interest in Sylvia. So her thoughts ran. Was it the girl's good looks, or was it simply that twinges of the judge's conscience had induced the wish to make the _amende honorable_, and that the gift of the expensive boat was an effort to reinstate the giver in his own eyes?

Something of an intimate nature must have pa.s.sed between them. To what could "the rosy cloud" have reference which should bring such conscious color to Sylvia's softly rounded cheek?

Miss Lacey shook her head. "If I only had Thinkright's chance," she thought, "I'd find out; but men are so queer. Probably he won't make the least effort. Provoking!"

She was correct in her suspicion. Thinkright did not ask any questions.

He suspected that the judge's interview with his niece might have brought to light some of her new ideas, and he knew the judge's opinion of all that cla.s.s of thought which he termed transcendental; but however ironical might be the reference in the boat's name, he would not have gone to the trouble of having it lettered thereon without a kindly intent.

Thinkright was satisfied, and contented himself with building a small boathouse on the waterside for Sylvia's new possession. She was his constant companion during the work, and sat beside him on the gra.s.s while he sawed and hammered, waiting upon him whenever opportunity offered.

He missed an eagerness of enthusiasm which he would have expected in the girl regarding the handsome boat. He could not know how fervently she wished that Uncle Calvin had given her instead the money it had cost. She could not express this thought to her cousin for obvious reasons; but as she sat beside him on an old log she built air castles that grew faster than the little boathouse.

"There isn't anything too good to be true, is there, Thinkright?" she said to him during a pause one day.

He came over and took a seat beside her, wiping his lined brow with his handkerchief.

She looked at him wistfully. "I'm expecting something very good to happen to me," she added.

"That's right; and something has. How about The Rosy Cloud?"

She sighed, and leaned her head against her companion's blue cotton shoulder.

"It's beautiful. I shall have all sorts of fine times with it. Think of throwing a lot of cushions inside, and taking a good story, then rowing out into the middle of the basin to float and read. All the trees would be leaning forward and beckoning, and I shouldn't know which The Rosy Cloud would favor."

Thinkright clasped his knee. "The Tide Mill would do its share of beckoning, remember. Look out for the current."

"The poor old thing!" remarked Sylvia. "Sometimes the mill looks so dignified and pathetic that I sympathize with it, and then again it seems just sulky and obstinate."

"We're very apt to read our feelings into the landscape," returned the other.

"Yes," went on the girl, her eyes as she leaned on her cousin's shoulder resting on the deserted, weather-beaten building in the distance, "when I first came, my heart just yearned toward that old mill. It looked just as I felt. It had made up its mind never to forgive. I had made up my mind never to forgive. Love has opened my locked shutters, and do you know, Thinkright, some afternoons those closed mill blinds seem to be melting in the sun. They grow so soft and rosy, I watch them fascinated. It seems as if they were giving way and I find myself expecting to see them slowly turn back. Oh," impulsively, "I want them to turn back! Couldn't we get a ladder and row out there some day and climb up and open them?"

Thinkright smiled. "They're nailed tight, dear, and they don't belong to us."

Sylvia shook her head. "Well," she persisted whimsically, "I believe they will open some time. I shan't be content until they do; and somehow or other I shall be mixed up with it."

"Is that the good thing you are expecting?" asked Thinkright, smiling, "to become a house-breaker?"

"No. Love will open the shutters yet. You don't understand me."