The Opened Shutters Part 24

"Ask Neptune," returned the stranger curtly.

"I mustn't lose that oar," cried the girl.

"Why didn't you take care of it, then?" rejoined the judge, and the boat just then venturing near him and curtsying, he jumped aboard of her with an agility that astonished the pa.s.senger. The craft rocked in the shock.

"Sit still," commanded the judge, and Sylvia remained motionless while he seized the oar, and going to the end of the boat, began sculling with a practiced hand, which was at strange variance with his costume.

The trouble in Sylvia's eyes vanished, and two little stars danced therein as she saw by the steady approach of their craft that the lost was as good as found, and so had leisure to gaze furtively at her gondolier. The down-drawn corners of the judge's lips, his s.h.a.ggy frown at the oar coquetting on the ripples with a breeze which was flapping the skirts of his formal frock coat, and the firm set forward of his high silk hat, formed an incongruous picture.

He took no notice of her gaze. "The currents in this basin," he said half to himself, "are most aggravating."

"They seem to have soured the disposition of the Tide Mill," ventured Sylvia.

"Eh?" returned the judge, glancing down into the eyes that laughed as mischievously as the small pearly teeth. The sunshine, glinting in the silky curls and brightening them to red, seemed laughing too.

"If you've never seen the Tide Mill before, do look at it," she went on. "Doesn't it seem as if it was refusing to be comforted?"

"It couldn't make its salt," remarked the judge briefly.

"Queer, with so much about," returned Sylvia demurely.

The lawyer caught her starry gaze again. He took no notice of her little joke.

"Can you swim?" he asked sternly.

"No," she returned.

"Then you've no business out here in a boat without some older person."

Sylvia was wearing Minty's blue sweater, and the heated, rosy face above it looked like that of a child. Judge Trent after his unexpected arrival had come down to the Basin to search for the pale and mourning niece concerning whom his conscience had been awakened. He had been looking for the black-clothed figure on the walk, at the moment when the dilemma of the awkward child in the boat had attracted his attention.

"The children of this neighborhood should every one be taught to swim and manage a boat, girls as well as boys," he went on. "They are not.

It is a very stupid mistake."

"I do want to learn very much," returned Sylvia meekly. "Minty Foster, a little girl here, has given me one lesson, and I came out to practice this afternoon."

"Minty can row very well," said the judge. "I hope you've learned a lesson about watching your tools. Experience is a good teacher." As he spoke he reached the runaway oar and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up dripping.

"Oh, I'm so much obliged," said Sylvia. She possessed a dimple in one cheek, and it was very busy while Judge Trent, his lips down-drawn, pushed both oars through the rowlocks beside her.

This accomplished, he sat down in the end of the boat and looked at her. She grasped the oars, wondering what he expected her to do. She felt that it would be a dangerous thing to splash that broadcloth, and she dared not laugh beneath the frowning, speculative gaze.

"I thought I knew all the people around these parts," he said, while Sylvia let the boat float. "I never saw you before."

"I'm a visitor," returned the girl. "Isn't it beautiful here?"

"There isn't any better place in this world," returned the lawyer impa.s.sively, "and I doubt very much if there is in the next."

He saw now that his companion was older than he had thought. He recalled, too, that she had made some comment on the Tide Mill.

"What was it you said about the Tide Mill?" he asked.

"Only that it _will_ look so sad and unapproachable even when the sun shines like this; as if its feelings had been hurt and it could never pardon or forget."

The judge continued to gaze. He was being penetrated by a suspicion.

This girl knew Minty Foster. Supposing--

But he had called on Miss Derwent, and she had verified Thinkright's description. It was her impression of muteness, pallor, sadness, which had decided the judge to drop his affairs and have a look at the farm.

What did Edna mean? What did Thinkright mean? Was it a plot to work on his sympathies? This smiling maid with mischief in her eyes frolicking recklessly in the clumsy old rowboat was the opposite type from the cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path.

She would have been suitably environed in its changeless sombre firs.

This girl, with her length of limb and graceful breadth of shoulder, had greater affinity with the white birches delicately fluttering their light bright greens as they leaned eagerly toward the water and Sylvia.

"The Tide Mill hurt beyond pardon, eh?" he returned. "Well, possibly it _didn't_ relish the epithets of the men who sank their money in it."

The flight of fancy was unprecedented for the speaker. He was sensible of unwonted excitement in a possibility.

His companion was still dimpling at the lean figure in the roomy frock coat and high hat.

Laura had been a small woman. The judge was considering that if his companion should rise she would equal or overtop his height.

Starved. Very needy. So Thinkright had put it. Nonsense. This _riante_ dryad of the birches could be nothing to him.

"Shows a small disposition, though, after all these years," he added after the brief pause. "Don't you think so? Nursing injuries and bearing malice and all that sort of business?"

The smile died from Sylvia's face. She half averted it, and trailed her fingers through the quiet ripples. "Thinkright says so," she answered.

And then the judge knew that those young lips so suddenly grave had kissed his picture good-night, that that young head had been pillowed on his sister's breast, and had const.i.tuted whatever brightness was in her troubled life.

A strange tightening constricted his throat, for, the temporary heat of the girl's exertion with the oars pa.s.sing away, he saw her cheeks pale, and it was with a grave glance that she looked at him again. "Do you know Thinkright Johnson?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I suppose he is the best man in the world," she added. "Don't you?"

The high hat nodded again. Judge Trent would not have given unqualified a.s.sent to so sweeping an a.s.sertion, but, poorer than Dunham on a recent occasion, he had not even monosyllables at his command. It did something novel to him to remember Laura and then picture this girl alone at the Hotel Frisbie.

They floated in silence for nearly a minute, then the judge spoke: "Thinkright has some very good ideas. It's an excellent practice, for instance, to forgive your enemies, and even on some special occasions to stretch a point and forgive your friends."

The young girl looked up at him. If this stranger knew her cousin he could not be quite a stranger. "He is trying to teach me to think right," she said simply. "It seemed at first as if it were going to be easy even though it was different; but, oh, it's hard sometimes! I get sore inside just as my arms used to in the gymnasium at school. Father wrote me a note once to get me excused from physical exercise; but,"

she gave a little laugh and shrugged the shoulders of the blue sweater, "Thinkright won't write me any note of excuse."

"H'm," thought the judge uncomfortably, "I guess she's got some of the Trent old Adam to buck up against." His gaze did not remove from the half-averted head with its sun-crowned, red-gold aureole.

"Who'd have thought Sam Lacey's carrot-top could be made over into that?" he mused.