f a young woman who blew out her cheeks in a
perpetual piping, and whose faded colors spoke eloquently of the storms
which had buffeted her.

The Admiral, as has been indicated, had an imposing mansion in
Nantucket town. For two months in the summer he entertained his
friends in all the glory of a Colonial background--white pillars,
spiral stairway, polished floors, Chinese Chippendale, lacquered
cabinets, old china and oil portraits. He gave dinners and played
golf, he had a yacht and a motor boat, he danced when the spirit moved
him, and was light on his feet in spite of his years. He was adored by
the ladies, lionized by everybody, and liked it.

But when the summer was over and September came, he went to Siasconset
and reverted to the type of his ancestors. He hobnobbed with the men
and women who had been the friends and neighbors of his forbears. He
doffed his sophistication as he doffed his formal clothes. He wore a
slicker on wet days, and the rain dripped from his rubber hat. He sat
knee to knee with certain cronies around the town pump. He made
chowder after a famous recipe, and dug clams when the spirit moved him.

His housekeeper, Jane, adjourned from the town house to "The Whistling
Sally" when Becky was there; at other times the Admiral did for
himself, keeping the little cottage as neat as a pin, and cooking as if
he were born to it.

It seemed to Becky that as the long low island rose from the sea, the
burdens which she had carried for so long dropped from her. There were
the houses on the cliff, the glint of a gilded dome, and then, gray and
blue and green the old town showed against the skyline, resolving
itself presently into roofs, and church towers, and patches of trees,
with long piers stretching out through shallow waters, boat-houses,
fishing smacks, and at last a thin line of people waiting on the wharf.

The air was like wine. The sky was blue with the deep sapphire which
follows a wind-swept night. There was not a hint of mist or fog.
Flocks of gulls rose and dipped and rose again, or rested unafraid on
the wooden posts of the pier.

The 'Sconset 'bus was waiting and they took it. Until two years ago no
automobiles had been allowed on the island, but there had been the
triumph of utility over the picturesque and quaint, and now one motored
across the moor on smooth asphalt, in one-half the time that the trip
had been made in the old days.

The Admiral did not like it. He ad