Flood Tide Part 6

"Your father couldn't have done a kinder thing than to have sent you to Wilton, Robert," she declared at last when quite out of breath with her rejoicings. "My, if you're not the mortal image of him as he used to be at your age! I can scarcely believe it isn't Nate. His forehead was high like yours, an' the hair waved back from it the same way; he had your eyes too--full of fun, an' yet earnest an' thoughtful. I ain't sure but you're a mite taller than he was, though."

"I top Dad by six inches, Aunt Tiny," smiled the young man.

"I guessed likely you did," murmured Celestina, with her eyes still on his face. "Now you must sit right down an' tell me all about yourself an' your folks. I want to know everything--where you come from; when you got here; how long you can stay, an' all."

"The last question is the only really important one," interrupted Willie, approaching the guest and laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. "The doin's of your family will keep; an' where you come from ain't no great matter neither. What counts is how long you can spare to visitin' Wilton an' your aunt. We ain't much on talk here on the Cape, but I just want you should know that there's an empty room upstairs with a good bed in it, that's yours long's you can make out to use it. Your aunt is a prime cook, too, an' though there's no danger of your mixin' up this place with Broadway or Palm Beach, I believe you might manage to keep contented here."

"I'm sure I could," Bob Morton answered, "and you're certainly kind to give me such a cordial invitation. I wasn't expecting to remain for any length of time, however. I came down from Boston, where I happened to be staying yesterday afternoon, and had planned to go back tonight.

I've been doing some post-graduate work in naval engineering at Tech and have just finished my course there. So, you see, I'm really on my way home to Indiana. But Dad wrote that before I returned he wanted me to take a run down here and see Aunt Tiny and the old town where he was born, so here I am."

Willie scanned the stranger's face meditatively.

"Then you're clear of work, an' startin' off on your summer vacation."

"That's about it," confessed Bob.

"Anything to take you West right away?"

"N--o--nothing, except that the family have not seen me for some time.

I've accepted a business position with a New York firm, but I don't start in there until October."

"You're your own master for four months, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I ain't a-goin' to urge you to put in your time here; but I will say again, in case you've forgotten it, that so long as you're content to remain with us we'd admire to have you. 'Twould give your aunt no end of pleasure, I'll be bound, an' I'd enjoy it as well as she would."

"You're certainly not considerin' goin' back to Boston today!" chimed in Celestina.

"I was," laughed Bob.

"You may as well put that notion right out of your head," said Willie, "for we shan't let you carry out no such crazy scheme."

"But to come launching down on you this way--" began the younger man.

"You ain't come launchin' down," objected his aunt with spirit. "We ain't got nothin' to do but inventin', an' I reckon that can wait."

Glancing playfully at Willie she saw a sudden light of eagerness flash into his countenance. But Bob, not understanding the allusion, looked from one of them to the other in puzzled silence.

"All right, Aunt Tiny," he at last announced, "if you an' Mr. Spence really want me to, I should be delighted to stay with you a few days.

The fact is," he added with boyish frankness, "my suit case is down behind the rose bushes this minute. Having sent most of my luggage home, and not knowing what I should do, I brought it along with me."

"You go straight out, young man, an' fetch it in," commanded Willie, giving him a jocose slap on the back.

Nevertheless, in spite of the mandate, Robert Morton lingered.

"Do you know, Aunt Tiny, I'm almost ashamed to accept your hospitality," he observed with winning sincerity. "We've all been so rotten to you--never coming to see you or anything. Dad's terribly cut up that he hasn't made a single trip East since leaving Wilton."

The honest confession instantly quenched the last smouldering embers of Celestina's resentment toward her kin.

"Don't think no more of it!" she returned hurriedly. "Your father's been busy likely, an' so have you; an' anyhow, men ain't much on follerin' up their relations, or writin' to 'em. So don't say another word about it. I'm sure I've hardly given it a thought."

That the final a.s.sertion was false Robert Morton read in the woman's brave attempt to control the pitiful little quiver of her lips; nevertheless he blessed her for her deception.

"You're a dear, Aunt Tiny," he exclaimed heartily, stooping to kiss her cheek. "Had I dreamed half how nice you were, wild horses couldn't have kept me away from Wilton."

Celestina blushed with pleasure.

Very pretty she looked standing there in the window, her shoulders encircled by the arm of the big fellow who, towering above her, looked down into her eyes so affectionately. Willie couldn't but think as he saw her what a mother she would have made for some boy. Possibly something of the same regret crossed Celestina's own mind, for a shadow momentarily clouded her brow, and to banish it she repeated with resolute gaiety:

"Do go straight out an' bring in that suit case, Bob, or some straggler may steal it. An' put out of your mind any notion of goin' to Boston for the present. I'll show you which room you're to have so'st you can unpack your things, an' while you're was.h.i.+n' up I'll get you some breakfast. You ain't had none, have you?"

"No; but really, Aunt Tiny, I'm not--"

"Yes, you are. Don't think it's any trouble for it ain't--not a mite."

Willie beamed with good will.

"You've landed just in time to set down with us," he remarked. "We ain't had our breakfast, either."

Celestina wheeled about with astonishment. Willie's hospitality must have burst all bounds if it had lured him, who never deviated from the truth, into uttering a falsehood monstrous as this. One glance, however, at his placid face, his unflinching eye, convinced her that swept away by the interest of the moment the little old man had lost all memory of whether he had breakfasted or not.

She did not enlighten him.

"Mebbe it ain't honest to let him go on thinkin' he's had nothin' to eat," she whispered to herself, "but if all them m.u.f.fins, an' oatmeal, an' coffee don't do nothin' toward remindin' him he's et once, I ain't goin' to do it. This second meal will make up fur the breakfast he missed yesterday. I ain't deceivin' him; I'm simply squarin' things up."

CHAPTER IV

THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER ENTERS

Before the morning had pa.s.sed Bob Morton was as much at home in the little cottage that faced the sea as if he had lived there all his days. His property was spread out in the old mahogany bureau upstairs; his hat dangled from a peg in the hall; and he had exchanged his "city clothes" for the less conventional outing s.h.i.+rt and suit of blue serge, both of which transformed him into a figure amazingly slender and boyish. For two hours he and Celestina had rehea.r.s.ed the family history from beginning to end; and now he had left her to get dinner, and he and Willie had betaken themselves to the workshop where they were deep in confidential conversation.

"You see," the inventor was explaining to his guest, "it's like this: it ain't so much that I want to bother with these notions as that I have to. They get me by the throat, an' there's no shakin' 'em off.

Only yesterday, fur example, I got kitched with an idee about a boat--"

he broke off, regarding his listener with sudden suspicion.

Bob waited.

Evidently Willie's scrutiny of the frank countenance opposite satisfied him, for dropping his voice he continued in an impressive whisper:

"About a motor-boat, this idee was."

Glancing around as if to a.s.sure himself that no one was within hearing, he hitched the barrel on which he was seated nearer his visitor.

"There's a sight of plague with motor-boats among these shoals," he went on eagerly. "What with the eel-gra.s.s that grows along the inlets an' the kelp that's washed in by the tide after a storm, the propeller of a motor-boat is snarled up a good bit of the time. Now my scheme,"

he announced, his last trace of reserve vanis.h.i.+ng, "is to box that propeller somehow--if so be as it can be done--an'--," the voice trailed off into meditation.