and rode and danced, who chafed when it rained, and
complained of the fog, who seemed endlessly trying to get something out
of life and who were endlessly bored, who wondered how Tristram could
stand the solitudes and who pitied him.

Tristram knew that he did not need their pity. He had a thousand things
that they did not have. He was never bored, and he was too busy to
manufacture amusements. There were always things happening on the
island--each day brought something different.

To-day, it was the winter gulls. "They are coming down--lots of them
from the north," he told the Admiral as they drove through the quaint
settlement with its gray little houses, "the big ones----"

There was also the _gerardia_, pale pink and shading into mauve. He had
brought a great bunch to "The Whistling Sally," and had put it in a bowl
of gray pottery.

When Becky saw the flowers, she knew whom to thank. "Oh, Tristram," she
said, "you found them on the moor."

Tristram, standing in the little front room of the Admiral's cottage,
seemed to tower to the ceiling. "The Whistling Sally" from the outside
had the look of a doll's house, too small for human habitation. Within
it was unexpectedly commodious. It had the shipshape air of belonging to
a seafaring man. The rooms were all on one floor. There was the big
front room, which served as a sitting-room and dining-room. It had a
table built out from the wall with high-backed benches on each side of
it, and a rack for glasses overhead. There was a window above the table
which looked out towards the sea. The walls were painted blue, and
there was an old brick fireplace. A model of a vessel from which the
figure-head in the front yard had been taken was over the mantel,
flanked by an old print or two of Nantucket in the past. There were
Windsor chairs and a winged chair; some pot-bellied silver twinkled in a
corner cupboard.

The windows throughout were low and square and small-paned and
white-curtained. The day was cool, and there was a fire on the hearth.
The blaze and the pink flowers, and the white curtains gave to the
little room an effect of brightness, although outside the early twilight
was closing in.

Jane came in with her white apron and added another high light. She
kissed Becky. "Did your grandfather tell you that Mr. Cope is coming
over to have chowder?" she asked.

It would be impossible to describe Jane's way of saying "chowder." It
had no "r," and she clipped it off a