Tobias O' The Light Part 53

"Huh! Me? There, now, Ralph, you needn't call me such names, even if I did tell a couple of whoppers to you and Lorny for the good of your souls. You ought to thank me."

Before they arrived in sight of the light another car purred up behind them. The chauffeur of this was Jackson, the Nicholets' man.

"Cap'n Ba.s.sett!" he shouted, "is Miss Lorna still over at the light?"

"I cal'late," replied Tobias.

"Will you take a letter that I got at the post-office just now for her?

I know she must be expecting it. Oh, Mr. Endicott! is it you?"

He had run his car up beside the limousine. He drove on the right side, and so easily handed the missive to Ralph.

"I know she's looking for it," Jackson repeated.

"Very well, I'll give it to her," said Ralph.

He looked a second time at the handwriting on the envelope. Then he put it into his pocket. He withdrew the letter from his pocket again when, an hour or so later, he and Lorna were walking across the sands toward the path to the summit of the Clay Head. Ralph offered the letter to her with a little hesitation.

"Oh! For me?" Then she saw the postmark, "Charlestown, Ma.s.s.," and blushed.

"I think I recognize that handwriting, Lorna," Ralph said. "It is that of a girl named Cora Devine. I do not know why she should write to you unless you opened the correspondence. Is it so?" he added gravely.

"Ye-es," admitted Lorna.

"I do not just know what your desire was in writing to Miss Devine. If it was to learn what my interest in her is, I will tell you that. She was a Cambridge girl-a mill girl. Silly and showy. You know the kind.

She got into trouble with-with one of the college fellows, and lost her job. Then her father was harsh to her. You know how many of that sort of people are, I suppose. They are strict with their children when it is too late."

"And who was the man, Ralph?" Lorna whispered.

"Well-I'm not much for telling tales out of school. But now that he has gone so far and is in jail, I may as well tell you that it was Degger."

"Oh! And he told me you were mixed up with Cora Devine, Ralph."

"I was." And Ralph smiled briefly. "He treated her like a dog. I had a chance to help her. I merely lent her money. She worked and paid me back-every cent. Then I managed to make her father reverse his decision, and Cora went back to live at home. They moved to Charlestown to escape gossip.

"Now, just lately, the old man has been ailing and they discovered that to save his life he must be operated on. Cora wrote to me and asked me for money to help. She says she will pay it back. I believe she will--

"Why, Lorna! you are tearing that letter up without reading it."

"I don't need to read it."

"But you would see by what she writes that I tell you the truth," he urged.

She allowed the bits of paper to flutter away across the sands. She turned her piquant face toward him so that he might see her smile and the light in her eyes.

"I need n.o.body to guarantee your word, Ralph Endicott," she said softly.

"I know you are one man without guile."

The old-fas.h.i.+oned fall flowers in Miss Heppy's garden (those which the high sea had not torn away) made brilliant patches of color upon the bleached sand before the lighthouse. Tobias o' the Light sat on the bench beside the door nursing a well-colored pipe.

Out of the open kitchen door floated a delicious odor of frying doughnuts. Miss Heppy, frying fork in hand and with glowing countenance, presided over the kettle while the heap of brown rings and twists grew higher in the bowl on the stove shelf.

"Heppy," her brother said reflectively, removing the pipe from between his lips to look at it, "I cal'late I will buy me that silver-banded pipe Si Compton's got in his store case, after all."

He said it tentatively, and then c.o.c.ked his ear for her reply.

"Tobias Ba.s.sett! air you a plumb fool?"

"Not so's you'd notice it I ain't, Heppy," he rejoined, grinning.

"I think you be. You don't need a silver-banded pipe no more than our old cat needs two tails."

"Oh, sugar! I dunno. A cat with two tails would be something dif'rent, I do allow."

"You was born looking for trouble," his sister declared. "For love's sake! ain't you satisfied? We got our money back safe. Now let it be there--"

"To git stole again, mebbe?" he muttered.

"Better be stole than be frittered away, like you want to. You don't show any sense."

"Not any?" he asked slyly. "Not even when it comes to matchmakin'? Was I afraid to step in where you said angels was scare't to tread? Tell me that, now!"

Miss Heppy was for the moment silenced. Tobias chuckled unctuously.

"And I killed two birds with one stone, didn't I? Four on 'em, to be exact. Don't talk! If I hadn't started that story about the Nicholets and Endicotts going stone broke, would there ever been a double wedding last week in the First Church of Clinkerport, with Miss Ida and the professor getting hitched, and Ralph and Lorna follerin' suit?

"Oh, sugar! I give it as my opinion neither wedding would have come off if it hadn't been for me. I'm some little-er-well! whatever it was Ralph Endicott called me. I cal'late on lookin' up that word in the dictionary some day.

"Anyway," he concluded, "you got to agree, Heppy, that I'm a good matchmaker. Those two young folks was drifting apart just as their uncle and aunt did. And 'twas me got 'em back on the right track.

Ain't it a fact, Heppy?"

His sister had come to the door the better to hear his self-congratulations. She brought a big brown doughnut on the fork and this she dropped into his hand as she smiled down upon him.

"I dunno, Tobias. Maybe you was pretty shrewd that time, take it all around. I know Lorna is going to be dreadful happy with her man. And Miss Ida, too. Well, I dunno. Maybe you do deserve that silver-banded pipe," she said.

THE END.