Instead of the Thorn. Clara Louise Burnham

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СКАЧАТЬ should I have done if you hadn't been here?"

      "Oh, they'se a car you could git over there a little piece." The speaker unhooked one thumb and gestured.

      "I'd far rather go with you, Mr. – Mr. – "

      "Holt. Jerry Holt. Most folks forgit the Mister. Shall I take yer bag?"

      It was standing where Mrs. Porter had descended from the train, and Jerry unhooked his thumbs and clumped across the platform in the heavy boots in which he had gone clamming that morning.

      Maud Porter, her spirits high, entered the old carryall. She suddenly decided not to mention her acquaintance with Miss Barry, but to pursue her way independently.

      Deliberately her companion placed her bag in the carriage, then lifted the weight which anchored his steed to duty, and took his place on the front seat, half turning with a sociable air to include his passenger. "Git ap, Molly," he remarked, and Molly somewhat stiffly consented to move.

      "You have a nice horse," remarked his passenger fatuously. She knew her own folly, but reveled in it. Pegasus himself could not have pleased her at this moment so well as Jerry Holt's bay. It proved that her remark was the open sesame to her driver's heart.

      "There's wuss," he admitted. "Ye see me lift that weight jest now? It's nonsense to use it, but Molly's a female, after all, and in-gines comin' and goin' might git on her nerves; but take her in the ro'd, now, that hoss, she ain't afraid o' no nameable thing!" The sea-blue eyes met his listener with a challenge.

      "Not autos even?" with open admiration.

      Jerry Holt snorted. "Shoot! She looks down on 'em. Miss – Miss – "

      "Oh, excuse me. I forgot you didn't know me. I'm Mrs. Porter, from Chicago."

      "Chicago, eh? We've got a neighbor out there. Barry his name is. A banker. Ever hear of him?"

      "Oh, yes, certainly."

      "Sister lives here still. We all went to school together."

      They were driving on a good road between green fields, and Mrs. Porter scented the crisp sea air.

      "There's a handsome new house started over there," she said, indicating a hill which was to their left. "Who's building that?"

      "Wall, now," the driver responded in his slow, mellifluous tones, "I couldn't tell ye – sudden."

      Mrs. Porter leaned back in the carriage with a sigh of ineffable contentment, and thought of the corner of State and Madison streets.

      In a minute more the glorious blue of the ocean came in sight, and scattered cottages, which with delightful irregularity were set down at random, some of them surrounded with trees and shrubs.

      Mrs. Porter leaned forward with sparkling eyes.

      "Don't take me anywhere just yet," she said. "Drive about a little. Have you time?"

      "Plenty," declared her companion. "Hain't got to go to the station only once more to-day. Git ap, Molly."

      "Oh, let her walk if she wants to. This is beautiful!"

      The Cape ran out into the sea, bearing lighthouses, and was bordered with high, jagged rocks among which the clear waves rushed and broke in gay, powerful confusion. As they neared the water the visitor observed on the side toward the ship channel a cottage whose piazza touched the rocks. The hill upon which it stood ended abruptly at the water, and daisies waved in the interstices of the natural sea-wall.

      "Who is the lucky woman who lives clinging to the rocks like that?" asked Mrs. Porter, indicating the shingled house with her slender umbrella.

      "That? Oh, that's Belinda Barry's cottage. Might's well live in the lighthouse and done with it, I say; but she's got a spyglass and likes to watch the shippin'. See the New York bo't out there comin' in now? There! Hear her blow? Bet Belinda's got her eye on her this minute. Seems if Belinda set on them rocks a lot when she was a girl, and had a cottage in the air, ye might say, 'bout livin' there some day; so when her brother began to have more money'n he knew what to do with, he give Belinda that place. Nobody else wanted it, I can tell ye that. When I'm ashore I'd ruther be ashore, myself."

      A man with a bucket of clams passed their slow-moving carriage, and looked curiously at Mrs. Porter.

      "Hello, Cy," said Jerry Holt, jerking his head toward the other's nod.

      The visitor looked after the figure in the dilapidated coat. "That man had a fine head," she said.

      "H'm," ejaculated the other. "A pity there ain't more in it."

      "Oh, is the poor creature – do you mean – "

      "Oh, no, not so bad as that; but ye know how there are some folks no matter what they try at, they 're allers poundin' and goin' astern. Cy's that kind."

      "It's a mercy there are always clams," said Mrs. Porter, and Jerry Holt's sea-blue eyes twinkled at her.

      The visitor's plans for independence suddenly weakened. That cottage clinging to the rocks was undermining it more swiftly the further the carriage advanced.

      "I believe, Mr. Holt, you'd better leave me at Miss Barry's," she said suddenly.

      He shook his head. "Not a bit o' use," he replied. "She won't even accawmodate ye, let alone takin' a boarder. Belinda ain't stuck up. Her worst enemy can't say it changed her a mite to have a brother that eats off gold plates. She was always jest that way."

      "What way?"

      "Oh, high-headed ye might call it. I dunno exactly what; but Belinda allers claimed to steer; and now she lives to Portland winters in any hotel she's a mind to, she don't act a mite different from what she allers did, though lots o' folks claim she does. 'T ain't no use, though, Mis' Porter, your goin' there. I'd – I'd kind o' hate to have Belinda refuse ye."

      The speaker cast a kindly glance at his passenger, who smiled back at him appreciatively.

      "Thank you, but I do know Miss Barry. I met her in Chicago, and I'll just stop for a call, and she'll advise me where to go; for I tell you I'm going to stay, Mr. Holt, even if you have to let me sleep in your carryall. Why haven't you a nice wife, now, who would take me in?"

      "That's jest why. 'Cause that's the specialty o' wives, and I didn't want to be took in."

      Mrs. Porter laughed, and the carryall drew up beside Miss Barry's sunlit piazza. She opened her purse. "How much, Mr. Holt?"

      "Well, I'll have to charge ye twenty-five cents for this outin'," he returned with deliberate cheerfulness. "One minute, till we see if Miss Barry's to home."

      He got out upon the piazza and knocked on the cottage door, opening it at the same time.

      "Belinda!" he called.

      "Leave it on the step," came a loud voice from the back of the house.

      "Hear that?" he grinned, turning. "She's home, and I'm to leave ye on the step."

      "That's all right," said Mrs. Porter, alighting. Jerry Holt's clean, rough hand assisted her, and lifted out her suit-case "I'm perfectly charmed to be left on the step," she added, handing her guide a quarter, which he pocketed with a nod. "I'll try not to envy the girl who sat on these СКАЧАТЬ