Geoffrey Strong | Page 7

life for me. My own time, my own will, and my own way!"
Miss Phoebe looked at him with very kind eyes.
"Doctor Strong," she said, "I think--it is no light thing for me to say,
holding the convictions I do--but I think you are worthy of single
blessedness!"

CHAPTER III
.
GARDEN FANCIES
Miss Vesta was trimming her lamp. That meant, in this early summer
season, that it was after seven o'clock. The little lady stood at the
window in the upper hall. It was a broad window, with a low round
arch, looking out on the garden and the sea beyond it. A bracket was
fastened to the sill, and on this bracket stood the lamp that Miss Vesta
was trimming. (It was against all fitness, as Miss Phoebe said, that a
lamp should be trimmed at this hour. Every other lamp in the house
was in perfect order by nine o'clock in the morning; but it was Miss
Vesta's fancy to trim this lamp in the evening, and Miss Phoebe made a
point of indulging her sister's fancies when she conscientiously could.)
It was a brass lamp of quaint pattern, and the brass shone so that several
Miss Vestas, with faces curiously distorted, looked out at the real one,
as she daintily brushed off the burnt wicking, and, after filling and
lighting the lamp, replaced the brilliantly polished chimney. She
watched the flame as it crept along the wick; then, when it burned
steady and clear, she folded her hands with a little contented gesture,
and looked out of the window.
The sun had set. The sea on which Miss Vesta looked was a water of

gold, shimmering here and there into opal; only where it broke on the
shingle at the garden foot, the water was its usual colour of a
chrysophrase, with a rim of ivory where it touched the shore. The
window was open, and a light breeze blew from the water; blew across
the garden, and brought with it scents of lilac, syringa, and June roses.
It was a pleasant hour, and Miss Vesta was well content. She liked even
better the later evening, when the glow would fade from the west, and
her lamp would shed its own path of gold across the water; but this was
pleasant enough.
"It is a very sightly evening!" said Miss Vesta, in the soft half-voice in
which she often talked to herself. "Good Lord, I beseech thee, protect
all souls at sea this night; for Jesus Christ's sake; amen!"
This was the prayer that Miss Vesta had offered every evening for
thirty years. As often as she repeated it, the sea before her eyes changed,
and she saw a stretch of black tossing water, with foam-crests that the
lightning turned to pale fire; a sail drove across her window, dipped,
and disappeared. Miss Vesta closed her eyes.
But as the old doctor said, people do not mourn for thirty years; when
she opened her eyes, they were grave, but serene. "It is a very sightly
evening!" she repeated. She leaned out of the window, and drew in long
breaths of sweetness. Presently the sweetness was crossed by a whiff of
a different fragrance, pungent, aromatic,--the fragrance of tobacco.
Doctor Strong was smoking his evening cigar in the garden. He would
not have thought of smoking in the house, even if Miss Phoebe would
have allowed it; he smoked as he rode on his morning round, and he
took his evening cigar, as now, in the garden. Miss Vesta saw him now,
in the growing dusk, striding up and down; not hastily, but with energy
and determination in every stride. Her eyes dwelt upon him
affectionately; she had grown very fond of him. It was delightful to her
to have this young, vigorous creature in the house, fairly electric with
life and joy and strength; she felt younger every time she saw him. He
was good to look at, too, though no one would have called him a beauty.
Tall and well-made, his head properly set on shoulders that were
perhaps the least bit too square; his fair hair cropped close, in hope of
destroying the curl that would still creep into it in spite of him; his
hazel eyes as bright as eyes could be, his skin healthy red and
brown,--yes, the young doctor was good to look at. So Miss Vesta

thought. There was a little look, too--it could hardly be called a
resemblance--yet he reminded her somehow--Miss Vesta's face
changed from a white to a pink rose, and she said, softly, "If I had had a
son, he might have looked like this. The Lord be with him and give him
grace!"
As Miss Vesta watched him, Geoffrey Strong stopped to examine
something in