Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 13

"Good-morning! What do you think of it?" he asked Louise, with a cordial smile that belonged to him.

"It is lovely!" she said. "Really wonderful! I suppose you have lived here so long it does not appeal to you as strongly as to the new-beholder?"

"I don't know about that. It's the finest place in the world; I think.

There's no prettier sh.o.r.e along the Atlantic coast than The Beaches."

"Perhaps you are right. I do not know much about the New England coast," she confessed. "And that--where the spray dashes up so high, even on this calm morning?"

"Gull Rocks. The danger spot of all danger spots along the outer line of the Cape. In rough weather all one can see out there is a cauldron of foam."

Before she could express herself again the purr of a swiftly moving motor car attracted her attention, and she turned to see a low gray roadster coming toward them from the north. The Sh.e.l.l Road, before reaching the sh.o.r.e, swerved northward and ran along the bluffs on which the bungalows and summer cottages were built. These dwellings faced the smooth white road, the sea being behind them.

As Louise looked the car slowed down and stopped, the engine still throbbing. A girl was at the wheel. She was perhaps fifteen, without a hat and with two plaits of yellow hair lying over her slim shoulders.

"Hey, Ford!" she shouted to the young man, "haven't you been up to Cap'n Abe's yet? Daddy's down at the dock now and he's in a tearing hurry."

She gazed upon Lou Grayling frankly but made no sign of greeting. She did not wait, indeed, for a reply from the young man but threw in the clutch and the car shot away.

"I've got to go up to the store," he said. "L'Enfant Terrible is evidently going to Paulmouth to meet the early train. Must be somebody coming."

Louise looked at him quickly, her expression one of perplexity. She supposed this child in the car was the daughter of Lawford's employer.

But whoever before heard a fisherman speak just as he did? Had Cap'n Abe been at home she certainly would have tapped that fount of local knowledge for information regarding Lawford. He did not look so much the fisherman type without his jersey and high boots.

"How do you like the old fellow up at the store?" Lawford asked, as they strolled along together. "Isn't he a curious old bird?"

"You mean my Uncle Amazon?"

"Goodness! He _is_ your uncle, too, isn't he?" and a flush of embarra.s.sment came into his bronzed cheek. "I had forgotten he was Cap'n Abe's brother. He is so different!"

"Isn't he?" responded Louise demurely. "He doesn't look anything like Uncle Abram, at least."

"I should say not!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lawford. "Do you know, he's an awfully--er--romantic looking old fellow. Looks just as though he had stepped out of an old print"

"The frontispiece of a book about buccaneers, for instance?" she suggested gleefully.

"Well," and he smiled down upon her from his superior height, "I wasn't sure you would see it that way."

"Do you know," she told him, still laughing, "that Betty Gallup calls him nothing but 'that old pirate.' She has taken a decided dislike to him and I have to keep smoothing her ruffled feathers. And, really, Cap'n Amazon is the nicest man."

"I bet he's seen some rough times," Lawford rejoined with vigor. "We used to think Cap'n Abe told some stretchers about his brother; but Cap'n Amazon looks as though he had been through all that Cap'n Abe ever told about--and more."

"Oh, he's not so very terrible, I a.s.sure you," Louise said, much amused.

"Did you notice the scar along his jaw? Looks like a cutla.s.s stroke to me. I'd like to know how he came by it. It must have been some fight!"

"You will make him out a much more terrible character than he can possibly be."

"Never mind. If he's anything at all like Cap'n Abe, we'll get it all out of him. I bet he can tell us some hair-raisers."

"I tell you he's a nice old man, and I won't have you talk so about him," Louise declared. "We must change the subject."

"We'll talk about _you_," said Lawford quickly. "I'm awfully curious.

When does your--er--work begin down here?"

"My work?" Then she understood him and dimpled. "Oh, just now is my playtime."

"Making pictures must be interesting."

"I presume it looks so to the outsider," she admitted. It amused her immensely that he should think her a motion picture actress.

"Your coming here and Cap'n Amazon exchanging jobs with his brother have caused more excitement than Cardhaven and the vicinity have seen in a decade. Or at least since _I_ have lived here."

"Oh! Then are you not native to the soil?"

"No, not exactly," he replied. And then after a moment he added: "It's a great old place, even in winter."

"Not dull at all?"

"Never dull," he rea.s.sured her. "Too much going on, on sea and sh.o.r.e, to ever be dull. Not for me, at least. I love it."

They reached the store. Louise bade the young man good-morning and went around to the back door to greet Betty.

Lawford made his purchases in rather serious mood and returned to his motor boat. His mind was fixed upon the way Louise Grayling had looked as he stepped ash.o.r.e and greeted her.

He had been close enough to her now, and for time enough as well, to be sure that there was nothing artificial about this girl. She was as natural as a flower--and just as sweet! There was a softness to her cheek and to the curve of her neck like rich velvet. Her eyes were mild yet sparkling when she became at all animated. And that demure smile! And her dimples!

When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in this way, he is far gone indeed. Lawford Tapp was very seriously smitten.

He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile. She had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long before he docked the launch. Lawford did not pay much attention to what went on in the big villa. His mother and sisters lived a social life of their own. He merely slept there, spending most of his days on the water.

The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford arrived. Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man. He "flew off the handle" at the slightest provocation. Many times a day he lost his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, "blew up."

These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp. They were escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his years of idleness. Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to the old-fashioned ports of the Cape. Catering to their wants was a gold mine but little worked at that time.

He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts. Then he began to make candy. His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous. He learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape in summer played all the year around. They went to Atlantic City or to the Florida beaches in the winter.

So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens all up and down the coast. "I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King" became a catch-word. It was then but a step to incorporating a company and establishing huge candy factories. I. Tapp went on by leaps and bounds. While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a multi-millionaire. Even a rather expensive family could not spend his income fast enough.

He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred to live there rather than elsewhere. His wife and the older girls insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe. Their one ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt their money should rightfully place them. But a house on the Back Bay does not always a.s.sure one's entrance to the circles of the "gilded codfish."

Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time. Lawford had the _Merry Andrew_ all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip. The sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing boat within miles of Cardhaven. Lawford was proud of her.

"So you're back at last, are you?" snapped the Salt Water Taffy King.

He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow. His very strut p.r.o.nounced him a self-made man. He glared at his son, whose cool nonchalance he often declared was impudence.

"I've been waiting some time for you, dad. Hop aboard," Lawford calmly said.