ust put on your specs and LOOK at it! Not a
man--but you--not a woman, not a child, not a girl--"

"Ah ha! ah ha! NOW we're gettin' at it! Not a girl! That's what's the
matter with you. You want to be up in the village, where you can go
courtin'. You're too fur from Elsie Peters, that's where the shoe
pinches. I've heard how you used to set out in her dad's backyard, with
your arm round her waist, lookin' at each other, mushy as a couple of
sassers of hasty-puddin'. Bah! I'll take care my next assistant ain't
girl-struck."

"Girl-struck! I'd enough sight ruther be girl-struck than always ravin'
and rippin' against females. And all because some woman way back in
Methusalem's time had sense enough to heave you over. At least, that's
what everybody cal'lates must be the reason. You pretend to be a
woman-hater. All round this part of the Cape you've took pains to get up
that kind of reputation; but--"

"There ain't no pretendin' about it. I've got brains enough to keep
clear of petticoats. And when you get to be as old as I be and know as
much as I do--though that ain't no ways likely, even if you live to be
nine hundred and odd, like Noah in Scripture--you'll feel the same way."

"Aw, come off! Woman-hater! You hate women same as the boy at the
poorhouse hated ice cream--'cause there ain't none around. Why, I
wouldn't trust you as fur as I could see you!"

This was the end of the dialogue, because Mr. Payne was obliged to break
off his harangue and dodge the stove-lifter flung at him by the outraged
lightkeeper. As the lifter was about to be followed by the teakettle,
Ezra took to his heels, bolted from the house and began his long tramp
to the village. When he reached the first clumps of bayberry bushes
bordering the deeply rutted road, a joyful cloud of mosquitoes rose and
settled about him like a fog.

So Seth Atkins was left alone to do double duty at Eastboro Twin-Lights,
pending the appointment of another assistant. The two days and nights
following Ezra's departure had been strenuous and provoking. Doing
all the housework, preparation of meals included, tending both lights,
rubbing brass work, sweeping and scouring, sleeping when he could and
keeping awake when he must, nobody to talk to, nobody to help--the
forty-eight hours of solitude had already convinced Mr. Atkins that the
sooner a helper was provided the better. At times he even wished the
disrespectful Payne back again, wished that he had soothed inste