invitations in the offing for you to distribute."

"She's jest a-flirtin', is she?"

"Like a sandpiper," declared Tobias. "Keepin' her hand in as ye might say. There ain't a mite o' harm in Lorny, but she's got to have some amus.e.m.e.nt."

He was nevertheless glad to see Ralph arrive. The lightkeeper believed that Lorna would much better have her old friend at hand to compare Degger with.

Had he been present at the first meeting of the trio, Tobias Ba.s.sett might have experienced some doubt of the value after all of such comparison. Lorna greeted Ralph very coolly. She and Degger were about to launch the lightkeeper's dory for a fishing trip when Ralph came striding down from the Clay Head.

"'Lo, Ralph," was the girl's careless hail. "Did you put the bait-pail in, Mr. Degger?"

"All right, Miss Lorna. It's right here. How do, Endicott?"

"I heard you were here, Degger," said Ralph, merely nodding to Lorna.

"What's running now?"

"Mostly squeteague and fluke," replied the girl. "Occasionally a tautog on rocky bottom. No snappers yet."

"Nothing worthy of Your Majesty's prowess," gibed Degger. "I understand you are a real fisherman," and he pushed off the boat.

Ralph's gaze narrowed and his brow clouded. He sat down on the sand.

There was room enough in the dory for a third; but neither of them had suggested his joining them.

Perhaps Ralph's att.i.tude was not exactly that of a dog in the manger.

But it did trouble him to see his erstwhile chum so friendly with Conny Degger. Not that he knew of anything actually bad about the fellow.

Merely, he had seemed so inconsequential and, at times, rather vulgar.

Ralph was quite aware that some men are one thing to their masculine friends while they act entirely differently in the company of women.

Degger, he thought, was of that kind. He hated to see Lorna "mixing up," as he termed it, with the fellow.

He was not wise enough-wise in women's ways-to hide this feeling from Lorna's sharp vision. She flattered herself that her old friend was displaying jealousy. This supposition could not fail to please her.

Ralph had become such a nuisance in her opinion, that she was determined to show him that she could easily attract other men. She would flout him and his whole family-as well as her own-by playing about with Conny Degger.

"Ralph thinks that he is the only man who ever pays me any attention,"

Lorna secretly ruminated. "And goodness knows, he has hung around so close that almost everybody else has been driven off. Conceited! That is just what Ralph Endicott is. Always looking over a tall collar at the rest of the world. If he didn't believe that Adam's last name was Endicott he never would admit relationship with the first of the race!

Humph!"

So she treated Degger particularly nicely on this occasion. She overlooked some rather crude things about the young man, and from the sh.o.r.e where Ralph lay she appeared to be having a most delightful time with her fishing partner.

It made her angry to see how Ralph hung around. She delayed coming ash.o.r.e as long as she could, hoping he would go away. She did not want a scene with him.

Ralph, however, did not even rise from his rec.u.mbent position when the fishing party beached the dory on the strand between the out-thrust reefs. Lorna hurried away, and Ralph did not attempt to join her, as she had feared he would. Instead, he got up slowly and aided Degger draw up the lightkeeper's dory.

"Awf'ly nice girl, that," said Degger boldly.

"Yes."

"Good sport, too. I never met a nicer girl."

"I don't believe you ever did," said the other, his level gaze boring Degger rather unpleasantly.

"Oh, I don't know!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Degger, with sudden warmth and a sneer on his lips. "I've known a lot of girls--"

"But not of her kind," broke in Ralph. "And don't you think it! Watch your step with Lorna."

"What's the matter with you, Endicott?" snapped Degger. "I don't have to take orders from you."

"Not as long as you go straight you don't," Ralph a.s.sured him. "But we all think too much of Lorna Nicholet around her to see anybody try to misbehave with her."

"Oh-you--"

"I know a few things about you. It's none of my business what you try out with other girls," Ralph hastily added. "But you be mighty careful with Lorna."

He turned on his heel then and strode away. Degger sneered after him.

"Think's he is the Great I Am!" he muttered. "You'd think he owned the girl. And putting on his airs with _me_!" Degger's scowl grew darker as he added: "Guess the beggar wants me to pay up. That is like these rich fellows. They are mighty free offering to lend you money; but they make you feel the obligation forever after."

Now, Conway Degger quite wronged Ralph on this point. The latter had entirely forgotten that Degger was in his debt from some time back in their college days.

Indeed, Ralph Endicott was never one to trouble about money, for he never remembered putting his hand into his pocket when he wanted that commodity without finding it. His family had been wealthy for generations. Just how well-to-do they were in the present generation he had never troubled to ask. Uncle Henry and the family attorneys attended to all that.

It did seem odd that just at this time the money matters of other people should begin to disturb Ralph Endicott. Not that he bothered his head about Conny Degger's affairs. It was somebody entirely different of whose financial difficulties he was unexpectedly made aware.

Coming up from the sh.o.r.e following his brief conversation with Degger, Ralph found the old lightkeeper mending a seine outside the lighthouse door.

"Wal, now," said Tobias, "ye look some het up. I seen ye soaking yourself out there on the sand in the sun, and I cal'lated you'd look like a b'iled lobster when you come up. And you do."

Ralph knew that it was an angry flush Tobias saw on his face. He grinned ruefully.

"More than the sun to make a fellow's blood boil, Mr. Ba.s.sett, sometimes."

"Oh, sugar!" rejoined the lightkeeper. "Ye don't let that feller bother ye none, do you, Ralph?"

"I do not like him much," the young man said stiffly.

"You mean you don't like him to be fooling around Lorny, hey?" said Tobias, his head shrewdly on one side.

"It is none of _my_ business--"

"Course it is! Course it is!" exclaimed the lightkeeper vigorously.

"I've just about sized this Degger feller up, I cal'late. His folks ain't any too well off, and I bet he'll never get round-shouldered carrying his money around."

"What has that to do with it, Mr. Ba.s.sett?" demanded Ralph, rather startled.

"Why, Lorny can't afford to waste her time with a feller like him," the lightkeeper declared coolly. "She's got to marry somebody with money. I know by the way Miss Ida was talkin' the other day over here, she was worried about Lorny marrying."

"What _do_ you mean, Tobias Ba.s.sett?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ralph, dropping down on the bench beside him.

"Why, I cal'late you know more about the Nicholets' affairs than I do."