The Lady of the Aroostook | Page 8

sure to get lost. I wish we'd come in a carriage."
"Couldn't 'a' kept the carriage waitin' on expense, Lyddy," retorted her grandfather, "But I tell you," he added, with something like resolution, "if I could find a carriage anywheres near that wharf, I'd take it, just as sure! I wouldn't miss that train for more'n half a dollar. It would cost more than that at a hotel to-night, let alone how your aunt Maria'd feel."
"Why, look here!" said Captain Jenness, naturally appealing to the girl. "Let me get your grandfather back. I've got to go up town again, any way, for some last things, with an express wagon, and we can ride right to the depot in that. Which depot is it?"
"Fitchburg," said the old man eagerly.
"That's right!" commented the captain. "Get you there in plenty of time, if we don't lose any now. And I'll tell you what, my little girl," he added, turning to Lydia: "if it'll be a comfort to you to ride up with us, and see your grandfather off, why come along! My girls went with me the last time on an express wagon."
"No," answered Lydia. "I want to. But it wouldn't be any comfort. I thought that out before I left home, and I'm going to say good-by to grandfather here."
"First-rate!" said Captain Jenness, bustling towards the gangway so as to leave them alone. A sharp cry from the old man arrested him.
"Lyddy! Where's your trunks?"
"Why!" said the girl, catching her breath in dismay, "where can they be? I forgot all about them."
"I got the checks fast enough," said the old man, "and I shan't give 'em up without I get the trunks. They'd ought to had 'em down here long ago; and now if I've got to pester round after 'em I'm sure to miss the train."
"What shall we do?" asked Lydia.
"Let's see your checks," said the captain, with an evident ease of mind that reassured her. When her grandfather had brought them with difficulty from the pocket visited last in the order of his search, and laid them in the captain's waiting palm, the latter endeavored to get them in focus. "What does it say on 'em?" he asked, handing them to Lydia. "My eyes never did amount to anything on shore." She read aloud the name of the express stamped on them. The captain gathered them back into his hand, and slipped them into his pocket, with a nod and wink full of comfort. "I'll see to it," he said. "At any rate, this ship ain't a-going to sail without them, if she waits a week. Now, then, Mr. Latham!"
The old man, who waited, when not directly addressed or concerned, in a sort of blank patience, suddenly started out of his daze, and following the captain too alertly up the gangway stairs drove his hat against the hatch--with a force that sent him back into Lydia's arms.
"Oh, grandfather, are you hurt?" she piteously asked, trying to pull up the hat that was jammed down over his forehead.
"Not a bit! But I guess my hat's about done for,--without I can get it pressed over; and I d'know as this kind of straw doos press."
"First-rate!" called the captain from above. "Never mind the hat." But the girl continued fondly trying to reshape it, while the old man fidgeted anxiously, and protested that he would be sure to be left. It was like a half-shut accordion when she took it from his head; when she put it back it was like an accordion pulled out.
"All ready!" shouted Captain Jenness from the gap in the bulwark, where he stood waiting to descend into the small boat. The old man ran towards him in his senile haste, and stooped to get over the side into the boat below.
"Why, grandfather!" cried the girl in a breaking voice, full of keen, yet tender reproach.
"I declare for't," he said, scrambling back to the deck. "I 'most forgot. I be'n so put about." He took Lydia's hand loosely into his own, and bent forward to kiss her. She threw her arms round him, and while he remained looking over her shoulder, with a face of grotesque perplexity, and saying, "Don't cry, Lyddy, don't cry!" she pressed her face tighter into his withered neck, and tried to muffle her homesick sobs. The sympathies as well as the sensibilities often seem dulled by age. They have both perhaps been wrought upon too much in the course of the years, and can no longer respond to the appeal or distress which they can only dimly realize; even the heart grows old. "Don't you, don't you, Lyddy!" repeated the old man. "You mustn't. The captain's waitin'; and the cars--well, every minute I lose makes it riskier and riskier; and your aunt Maria, she's always