Flood Tide | Page 8

"What under heaven are
you talkin' about, Celestina? Delight marry? Not she! She's too young.
Besides, she's well enough content with Abbie an' the three captains an'
me. Marry? Delight marry! Ridiculous!"
"But you don't mean to say you expect a creature as pretty as she is not
to marry," said Celestina aghast.
"Oh, why, yes," ruminated Zenas Henry. "Of course she's goin' to get
married sometime by an' by--mebbe in ten years or so. But not now."
"Ten years or so! My goodness! Why, she'll be thirty or thirty-five, an'
an old maid by that time."
"No, she won't. I was forty-five before I married, an' it didn't do me no
hurt or spoil my chances."
"You might have been livin' with Abbie all them years, though."
"I know it."
He paused thoughtfully.
"Yes," he reflected aloud, "I've often thought what a pity it was Abbie
an' I didn't have our first youth together. It took me half a lifetime to
find out how much I needed her."
"You wouldn't want Delight should do that," ventured Celestina.

"Delight? We ain't discussin' Delight," retorted Zenas Henry, promptly
on the defensive. "Delight's another matter altogether. She's nothin' but
a baby. There's no talk of her marryin' for a long spell yet."
Peevishly he kicked the turf with the toe of his boot.
Although he said no more, it was quite evident that he was much
irritated.
"Well," he presently observed in a calmer tone, "I reckon I'll go round
an' waylay Willie."
Celestina, leaning against the door frame, watched the gaunt,
loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behind
the corner of the house.
What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entrance to
the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom she could
see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples of gold. A
weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel, and
above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routed from
their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the path
to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic pulsing of
the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached her ear. It
was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar stained its reach
of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges with snowy foam.
It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework.
Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The languor
of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose from the
warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms and
yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into the
house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning had
abandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul the
benediction of the world about her.
It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win for

Celestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrant
quality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughly
sympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of industry. For
Willie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina.
There were intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, all
day long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep; then
would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or did even
worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor. Here
on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he would
often sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming to
himself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb,
strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neither
smoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as
if carved from stone.
To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been up
since dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeply
preoccupied to fill and light the blackened pipe that dangled limply
from his lips. Yet despite all his coaxings and cajolings, the iron pump
opposite the shed door still refused to do anything but emit from its
throat a few dry, profitless gurgles that seemed forced upward from the
very caverns of the earth. Both Willie and Jan Eldredge looked tired
and disheartened, and when Zenas Henry approached stood at bay,
surrounded by a litter of wrenches, hammers, and scattered fragments
of metal.
"What's the matter with your pump?" called Zenas Henry as he strolled
toward them.
Willie turned on the intruder, a smile half humorous, half contemptuous,
flitting across