Tobias O' The Light Part 20

"If you are not afraid that it is still too rough."

"Nonsense! I'm not afraid with _you_," she said with a frankness that secretly pleased him. She seemed quite unconscious that her words marked a comparison of Conway Degger and Ralph. She added: "The _Fenique_ is a good boat."

"We'll try it, then," Ralph said cheerfully and without looking directly at her.

But she was worth looking at! With her glossy curls banded with one of Ralph's old neckties that she had found below, her dark and glowing face was more piquant than usual. The oilskins swathing her figure made it seem veritably boyish.

She, too, was barefooted, and her tiny, high-arched feet were as white as milk. Ralph looked at them shyly; but Lorna seemed quite unconscious of his scrutiny.

They did not speak of Conway Degger. Yet Ralph thought-it was a poignant flash in his mind-that the girl had been just as unconsciously frank with Degger as she was with him. Was she not too old now to play about with men, like the little tomboy she was wont to be?

Never until Degger had come into their life had this thought ruffled Ralph's tranquillity. Surely Lorna Nicholet was a woman grown. She should leave off childish things.

Yet she was such a bewitching morsel of a girl! Ralph moved nervously.

He cast another glance at those wondrously white, blue-veined insteps.

She was so slim, yet perfectly formed! The ankles sticking out of the rolled-up legs of the oilcloth trousers were wonderfully sculptured.

She sat on the bench with her ankles crossed before her, for all the world like a thoughtless boy. Nevertheless her s.e.x-charm took hold upon Ralph Endicott's senses as it never had before. "Why," he told himself, "what a sweet wife Lorna would be for the man who wooed and won her!"

It was sacrilege for a fellow of Conny Degger's kind to be accorded even the most innocent a.s.sociation with her!

"She's nothing but a child in thought," Ralph told himself. "She's had too much freedom. Or have I grown up in this last year while she has remained just what she looks to be-a little, winsome child?"

Ralph Endicott should have looked twice, perhaps. As he turned determinedly away the girl shot him a roguish glance from under her tumbled curls. Then she drew in the tiny feet, and the voluminous trouser-legs fell over and hid them.

Ralph did not understand the new feelings stirring within him. Without another word or glance he started the engine and steered the motor-boat for the narrow entrance to Lower Trillion Harbor.

The sea was extremely choppy at the harbor mouth. The motor-boat danced about, her propeller wiggling wildly out of the water more than half the time. But Lorna expressed no perturbation. She only clung to the rail with both hands, and when a billow chanced to break and dash a bucket of water over her, she laughed aloud.

"Plucky kid!" thought Ralph with pride. "There never was a girl to beat her-never!"

Yet he had by no means forgotten how unkindly she had treated him.

There was that time back there in the late winter when they had been cast upon the hospitality of the lightkeeper and his sister. Ralph could not overlook that occasion.

"If she thinks she can pick me up and throw me away again, like an old glove and just as she pleases, she's a lot mistaken," the young man told himself. "I believe Lorna is a born flirt."

He could not really harden his heart toward his little chum. But he told himself he was not blind to her faults. He had always excused her waywardness, even of late. And now what Tobias had said about the Nicholets' financial trouble made Ralph feel even more consideration for the girl.

Of course Miss Ida and John Nicholet were particularly desirous that Lorna should marry Ralph, especially in view of the family's misfortune.

And if Ralph did not marry her the Nicholets might make it very unpleasant for Lorna.

"I'll say they will," sighed Ralph. "She doesn't know about their poverty, poor girl. They are covering it up all right. But it is going to put us both in a mighty tight corner. Lorna can't marry a poor man in any case. Why! that is preposterous to consider even. But if she doesn't favor me-and heaven knows she doesn't-how will she ever square it with her family? They have never given her a chance to meet the right chaps.

"Great grief! Do I want to marry Lorna or not? I wonder!"

He cast another glance at her over his shoulder. She still sat on the bench. She had shaken the curls over her face, and her red lips were pursed in a most adorable pout.

Ralph sighed hugely, shrugged his shoulders, and looked forward again.

It certainly was a puzzle!

Suddenly he saw something that brought a cry from his lips. Lorna jumped up and ran to him, clinging to his arm and pressing close against him as she looked over his shoulder.

"Oh! do you see it, Ralph?" she cried.

He pointed. The dory heaved into view again on another billow-a dark patch upon the slate-colored sea.

"Can we catch it?" breathed Lorna in his ear, a curl brushing his flushing cheek.

"To be sure," and he moved aside. "You take hold here. She doesn't kick much. Steady now!"

"Oh!" she pouted, "I can manage the old wheel well enough," and she crowded in beside him.

She had rolled up the sleeves of his storm jacket, and her little brown hands gripped the wheelspokes in a most capable fashion. Ralph stepped back and allowed her to take his place. He grew cool again and grinned to himself. She certainly was one plucky girl!

He had no idea that he had overlooked a chance that perhaps would never be offered to him again.

He got a bucket from below and then coiled down a length of halyard and held the end of it in readiness as Lorna brought the _Fenique_ rubbing alongside the wallowing dory.

Ralph went over the side, carrying the rope and bucket with him and stood knee deep in water in the dory's bottom. He bent on the line and gestured to the girl to bear off so as to drag the dory astern of the motor-boat. Then he went to work to bail out with the bucket.

This was a hard fight at first, for the waves were still boisterous.

Every now and then one broke over the dory and came near to filling it as full as it was when Ralph got aboard.

But the young fellow persevered. If he possessed one characteristic stronger than another, it was stubbornness. At this juncture it proved to be a virtue. He plied the bucket steadily, and at last lowered the water in the dory so that he could afford to take breath.

"Good boy, Ralphie," shouted Lorna, down wind, and he looked up to see her elfin face all asmile again for him. He waved his hand cheerily.

"Shall I tune her up a little?" she asked.

"Little at a time, Kid! That's the boy!"

He had spoken to her that way ten years before when they were in the middle of some adventurous escapade. Lorna flushed and turned away her face again. More than a pout expressed her vexation now. Ralph did not show a proper appreciation of her "grown-upness." She had been for the moment too kind to him!

So after that, and when he had bailed the dory completely and had come inboard, Lorna snubbed him. Her fluctuating att.i.tude certainly puzzled the young man.

"Now what have I done?" he secretly wondered.

But as she left the wheel to him without speaking and went to sit down alone in the stern of the _Fenique_, he did not urge conversation upon her. They sailed into Clinkerport Bay, and so around to the cove beside the lighthouse, both about as cheerful as had been their wont when together during the past few weeks.

Tobias came down to the sh.o.r.e to hail them.

"I give it as my opinion," the lightkeeper said, "that you sandpipers air all lackin' in good sense. 'Tis a mystery to me how you come to get raised to the age you be without getting drowned a dozen times over!"

"I was born to be hung," Ralph told him. "The sea isn't wet enough to drown me."

"But you've no business riskin' Lorny's life in your tom-fool v'y'ges."

Ralph did not even bother to deny the lightkeeper's charge. He snubbed the motor-boat to the mooring buoy and then sculled Lorna ash.o.r.e in the dory. She still wore his oilskins and was bare-footed, but carried her dress over her arm.

"I'll run up to the light to dress," she said. "In any case I must see Mr. Degger for a moment."