Vesty of the Basins | Page 8

mutely
protective against all the world, without repugnance, infinitely tender.
"I am coming up to sit with you and Miss Pray, some evening," she
said. Her warm brown fingers touched mine. She did not blush; she had
her Sunday face--holy, grave.
"Come! God bless you, child!" I said, and limped on, strong against the
world.
I sat by the fireplace that evening; not a night in all the year in this
sweet north country but you shall find the fire welcome.
Miss Pray's fireplace stretched wide between door and door. Opposite it
were the windows; you saw the water, the moon shone in.
Miss Pray did her own farming and was sleepy, yet sat by me with that
religious awe of me as befitting one who had elected to pay seven
dollars a week for board! I surprised a look of baffled wonder and
curiosity on her face now and then, as well as of remorse at allowing
me to attach such a mysterious value to my existence.
She did not know that her fire in itself was priceless.
It burned there--part of a lobster trap, washed ashore, three buoys, a
section of a hen-coop, a bottomless chopping tray, a drift-wood stump
with ten fantastic roots sending up blue and green flame, a portion of
the wheel of an outworn cart, some lobster shells, the eyes glowing,
some mussel shells, light green, and seaweed over all, shining, hissing,
lisping.
Miss Pray snored gently. I put some of the spruce gum Vesty had given
me into my mouth; well, yes, by birth I have very eminent right to
aristocratic proclivities.

But the spruce woods came again before me with their balm, and her
face. I dwelt upon it fondly, without that pang of hope which most men
must endure, and smiled to think of Captain Leezur's dismay if he
should know how Vesty had already coiled herself around my
heart-strings!

III
"GETTIN' A NAIL PUT IN THE HOSS'S SHU"
They never noticed my physical misfortune except in this way: they
invited me everywhere; to mill, to have the horse shod, all voyages by
sea or land; my visiting and excursion list was a marvel of repletion.
Captain Pharo came down--my soul's brother--with more of "a h'tch
and a go," than usual in his gait.
"My woman read in some fool-journal somewheres, lately," he
explained, "about pourin' kerosene on yer corns and then takin' a match
to her and lightin' of her off.
"Wal', I supposed she was a-dressin' my corns down in jest the old
usual way, last Sunday mornin', when--by clam! ye don't want to splice
onto too young a shipmate, major." (This last was a divinely Basin
thought, treating me as a subject of the wars.)
"I've married all states but widders," said Captain Pharo, with a blasé
air of conjugal experience; "but my advice above all things is," he
murmured, lifting his maimed foot, "don't splice onto too young a
shipmate. They're all'as a-tryin' some new ructions on ye. Now Vesty,
even as stiddy as she is, she 's all'as gittin' the women folks crazy over
some new patron for a apern, or some new resute for pudd'n' and pie.
So," he added, "ef you sh'd come to me, intendin' to splice, all the
advice 't I c'd give 'ud be, I don't know widders; poo! poo!--hohum!
Wal, wal--
[Illustration: Music fragment: 'My days are as the grass, Or as--']

try widders."
As I stood speechless with conflicting emotions, he lit his pipe and
continued, more hopefully:
"I've got to go up to the Point to git a nail put in the hoss's shu, so I
come down to ask you to go up to the house and jine us."
Now I already knew that the Basin way of proceeding to get a nail put
in the horse's shoe meant a day of widely excursive incident and
pleasure, in which the main or stated object was cast far from our
poetical vision. I accepted.
"My woman invited Miss Lester to go with us. The old double-decker
rides easier for havin' consid'rable ballast, ye know--and Miss Lester
tips her at nigh onto about two hunderd; she 's a widder too, ain't she,
by the way? but she 's clost onto sixty-seven; hain't no thoughts o'
splicin', in course. Miss Lester 's a vary sensible woman. But I thought
cruisin' 'round with her kind o' frien'ly on the back seat, ye might git a
sort of a token or a consute in general o' what widders is."
"True," said I gratefully, with flattered meditation.
"It 's a scand'lous windy kentry to keep anything on the clo's-line," said
the captain, as we walked on together, sadly gathering up one of his
stockings and a still more inseparable companion of his earthly
pilgrimage