Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 44

"I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips.

"You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie declared. "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for those Tapps. They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push themselves into the society of their betters."

"Perhaps," sighed Louise. "But consider, auntie. This is a free and more or less independent republic. After all, money is the only recognized mark of aristocracy."

"Money!"

"Yes. How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them--or the Standishes'--or the Graylings'--without money? And consider our own small beginnings. Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of the yardstick and sold mola.s.ses by the quart."

"You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her ears. "I will not listen to you. It is sacrilegious."

"It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from mola.s.ses to taffy. And it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other."

So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise, too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of the bluff.

This was Sat.u.r.day and she hoped that Lawford would come for the week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank into the full sweep of the gale.

"Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?"

The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face. He glared at her as though he did not hear what she said. In his hand he clutched an envelope.

"Ha! That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled. "Seen Ford?"

"No. Is he at home?"

"He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder. "I supposed he'd come over to see you."

"Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly. "He is a very faithful knight."

"He's a perfect ninny, if _that's_ what you mean," snapped the Taffy King. "He's made a fool of me, too. I shouldn't wonder if he knew this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled.

"You arouse my curiosity," Louise said. "I hope Lawford has done nothing more to cause you vexation."

"I don't know whether he has or not. The young upstart! I feel like punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat to him, Miss Grayling. D'you know what he's done?"

"Something really fine, I hope. I do not think you wholly appreciate Lawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly.

"Ha! No. I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be appreciated," he snarled.

But at that Louise merely laughed. "You don't tell me what he has done," she urged.

"Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled us candy makers for years. I'm having a new cutting machine built after his suggestions."

"I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she interrupted. "You know, he and I are going to need the money."

"Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again. "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes to a contract. He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will."

"I'm so glad!" cried Louise.

"You are, eh? What for?"

"Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him.

I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her.

"So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right in my very teeth?"

"I--I hope you won't be _very_ angry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly.

"You see--we love each other."

"Love!" began I. Tapp. Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over and over in his hand. "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh. "Perhaps there is something in that. Seems to be. I set my heart on having my fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson--and see what's come of it."

He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand.

"Look at that!"

With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure. Before she could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention.

"What can it be?" Louise cried. "The lifesavers!"

"And their gear--lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed. "Must be a wreck----"

His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm. "There! Don't you see her? A vessel in distress sure enough. She's drifting in upon Gull Rocks. Bad business, Miss Grayling."

"Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise. "He's with the surfmen!"

Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf. The bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water.

Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.

"I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got this invitation to her wedding."

Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the making of Lawford," she said calmly.

"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."

"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him softly.

They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold together long after she struck the reef.

Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts, whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.

Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was doomed.

That might be the _Curlew_ out there--the schooner her father was aboard--instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she and her uncle had figured out the _Curlew's_ course homeward-bound from her last port of call. She might pa.s.s in sight of Cardhaven Head and the lighthouse any day now.