Thankfuls Inheritance | Page 4

at the reins only caused
him to stamp and evince an inclination to turn around. Go ahead he
would not.
"Judas priest!" exclaimed the driver. "I do believe the critter's
drowndin'! Somethin's wrong. I've got to get out and see, I s'pose. Set
right where you be, ladies. I'll be back in a minute," adding, as he took
a lighted lantern from beneath the seat and pulled aside the heavy boot
preparatory to alighting, "unless I get in over my head, which ain't so
dummed unlikely as it sounds."
Lantern in hand he clambered clumsily from beneath the boot and
disappeared. Inside the vehicle was blackness, dense, damp and
profound.
"Auntie," said a second feminine voice, "Auntie, what DO you suppose
has happened?"
"I don't know, Emily. I'm prepared for 'most anything by this time.
Maybe we've landed on Mount Ararat. I feel as if I'd been afloat for

forty days and nights. Land sakes alive!" as another gust shot and beat
its accompanying cloudburst through and between the carriage curtains;
"right in my face and eyes! I don't wonder that boy wished he was a
duck. I'd like to be a fish--or a mermaid. I couldn't be much wetter if I
was either one, and I'd have gills so I could breathe under water. I
SUPPOSE mermaids have gills, I don't know."
Emily laughed. "Aunt Thankful," she declared, "I believe you would
find something funny in a case of smallpox."
"Maybe I should; I never tried. 'Twouldn't be much harder than to be
funny with--with rain-water on the brain. I'm so disgusted with myself I
don't know what to do. The idea of me, daughter and granddaughter of
seafarin' folks that studied the weather all their lives, not knowin'
enough to stay to home when it looked as much like a storm as it did
this mornin'. And draggin' you into it, too. We could have come
tomorrow or next day just as well, but no, nothin' to do but I must start
today 'cause I'd planned to. This comes of figgerin' to profit by what
folks leave to you in wills. Talk about dead men's shoes! Live men's
rubber boots would be worth more to you and me this minute. SUCH a
cruise as this has been!"
It had been a hard trip, certainly, and the amount of water through
which they had traveled the latter part of it almost justified its being
called a "cruise." Old Captain Abner Barnes, skipper, for the twenty
years before his death, of the coasting schooner T. I. Smalley, had,
during his life-long seafaring, never made a much rougher voyage, all
things considered, than that upon which his last will and testament had
sent his niece and her young companion.
Captain Abner, a widower, had, when he died, left his house and land at
East Wellmouth to his niece by marriage, Mrs. Thankful Barnes.
Thankful, whose husband, Eben Barnes, was lost at sea the year after
their marriage, had been living with and acting as housekeeper for an
elderly woman named Pearson at South Middleboro. She, Thankful,
had never visited her East Wellmouth inheritance. For four years after
she inherited it she received the small rent paid her by the tenant, one
Laban Eldredge. His name was all she knew concerning him. Then he

died and for the next eight months the house stood empty. And then
came one more death, that of old Mrs. Pearson, the lady for whom
Thankful had "kept house."
Left alone and without present employment, the Widow Barnes
considered what she should do next. And, thus considering, the desire
to visit and inspect her East Wellmouth property grew and strengthened.
She thought more and more concerning it. It was hers, she could do
what she pleased with it, and she began to formulate vague ideas as to
what she might like to do. She kept these ideas to herself, but she spoke
to Emily Howes concerning the possibilities of a journey to East
Wellmouth.
Emily was Mrs. Barnes' favorite cousin, although only a second cousin.
Her mother, Sarah Cahoon, Thankful's own cousin, had married a man
named Howes. Emily was the only child by this marriage. But later
there was another marriage, this time to a person named Hobbs, and
there were five little Hobbses. Papa Hobbs worked occasionally, but
not often. His wife and Emily worked all the time. The latter had been
teaching school in Middleboro, but now it was spring vacation. So
when Aunt Thankful suggested the Cape Cod tour of inspection Emily
gladly agreed to go. The Hobbs house was not a haven of joy,
especially to Mr. Hobbs' stepdaughter, and almost any change was
likely to be an agreeable one.
They had left South Middleboro that afternoon. The rain began when
the train reached