Five Hundred Dollars | Page 7

to me just now."
"But just once look again," said Mr. Isaacs, and he stepped briskly behind his wife and held up an ear-ring to each of her ears. "See them on a chaste and lovely form. With these your wife will be still more lovely. All those other men will say, 'Where did that graceful lady find so rich ear-rings?' You will see they are a great success: her most bosom friends will hate her; they will turn so green like the grass on the ground with envy. It is a great pleasure when my wife wears those kind: her very sisters cannot speak for anger, and her own mother looks so rigid like the Cardiff Giant."
"Well, I guess I shall have to take them," said David, "and you 'll have to wrap them right up: we have n't got more than about time to get the train, have we, Calvin?"
"So help me gracious!" said Mr. Isaacs, "is there no time to sell our friend Calvin a pair? He will repent not to secure those other pair, until his dying day; so sorry like he lose his ship some day upon those rocks. I suppose there is no others like those in the whole creation."
But he wrapped the purchase up in a bit of white paper and gave David Prince four trade dollars in change for a ten-dollar bill, and the two men went out, leaving Mr. Isaacs free to attend to a timid woman in black who had just come in to raise fifty cents upon a ring, while Mrs. Isaacs looked after a carpenter who proposed to pawn his edge-tools for rent-money.
Mr. Isaacs waved his hand and smiled as the men went out of the door. "You will find they are a success, to surprise yourself," he called out: "her most bosom friends will writhe and scream with envy."
*****
The winding line of the long New England coast faces the sea, in its sweeping curves, in every direction. From the Callender place, the ocean lay to the south. Though elsewhere east winds might be blowing harsh upon the coast, here, almost every day, and all day long, in summer, the southwest wind came pouring in from the expanse of waters, fresh and cool, boisterous often, but never chill; and even winds from the east lost edge in crossing miles of pitch-pine woods, of planted fields, of sandy ponds, of pastures, and came in softened down and friendly.
A gentle breeze was drifting in from sea. All day long it had been blowing, salt and strong and riotous, tossing the pine-tops, bending the corn, swaying the trees in the orchards, but now it was preparing to die away, as was its wont, at sundown, to give to the woods, the cornfields and the orchards a little space of rest and peace before it should rise again in the early evening to toss them all night long. The blue of the sky was blue in the water. Every object stood out sharp and clear. Down the low, curving shore-line, curls of smoke rose from distant roofs, and on the headland, up the coast, the fairy forest in the air was outlined with precision. Distant ships were moving, like still pictures, on the horizon, as if that spell were laid on them which hushed the enchanted palace. There was just sea enough to roll the bell-buoy gently, and now and then was rung an idle note of warning. Three fishing-boats lay anchored off the Spindle, rising and falling, and every now and then a sea broke on the rock. On the white sand beach, waves were rolling in, dying softly away along the shore, or heavily breaking, with a long, flying line of foam.
The sun was fast descending. Delia Prince went out to the corner of the house and shaded her eyes to look at the sunset. The white clouds turned to a flaming red, and the reflection dyed to crimson the surface of the creeks; the sun descended toward the wooded bluff that flanked the bay, sent a thousand shattered, dazzling rays through the trees, and disappeared.
The red of the clouds and the red of the water gave place to gray. The wind died down. The silence was intense,--all the more marked because of the few sharp sounds that broke it now and then. Across the bay, near shore, a man was raking oysters; he stood in the stern of his skiff, and the bow was up in the air. Near by a girl was driving sluggish cows along the beach, and her shrill cries came over the water; by a cottage on the bank a boy was chopping brush upon a block, and Delia watched the silent blows, and heard the sound come after. He smiled as she looked; for every