," urged the young man.

"I can't, Ira; don't ask me." The young girl's face, which was delicate
in outline, was troubled, and the sensitive curves of her lips trembled.
The faded blue of her dress harmonized with the soft tones of the scene;
her hat lay beside her, an uncurled, articulated ostrich feather
standing up in it like an exclamation point of brilliant red.

The young man pulled his hat over his eyes and looked over to the
nearest boat. Mellony glanced at him timidly.

"You see, I'm all she's got," she said.

"I ain't goin' to take you away from her, unless you want to go," he
replied, without looking at her.

"She thinks I'll be happier if I don't--if I don't marry."

"Happier!"--he paused in scorn--"and she badgerin' you all the time if
you take a walk with me, and watchin' us as if we were thieves! You
ain't happy now, are you?"

"No." Mellony's eyes filled, and a sigh caught and became almost a sob.

"Well, I wish she'd give me a try at makin' you happy, that's all." His
would-be sulkiness softened into a tender sense of injury. Mellony
twisted her hands together, and looked over beyond the vessels to the
long, narrow neck of land with its clustering houses, beyond which
again, unseen, were booming the waves of the Atlantic.

"Oh, if I only knew what to do!" she exclaimed,--"if I only knew what to
do!"

"I'll tell you what to do, Mellony," he began.

"There's ma, now," she interrupted.

Ira turned quickly and looked over his shoulder. Across the uneven
ground, straight towards them, came the figure of Mrs. Pember. The
tenseness of her expression had further yielded to resolution, which had
in turn taken on a stolidity which declared itself unassailable. No one
of the three spoke as she seated herself on a bit of timber near them,
and, folding her hands, waited with the immobility and the apparent
impartiality of Fate itself. At last Mellony spoke, for of the three she
was the most acutely sensitive to the situation, and the least capable
of enduring it silently.

"Which way did you come, ma?" she asked.

"I come down Rosaly's Lane," Mrs. Pember answered. "I met Cap'n
Phippeny, and he told me you was down here."

"I'm obligated to Cap'n Phippeny," observed Ira, bitterly.

"I dono as he's partickler to have you," remarked Mrs. Pember,
imperturbably.

There was another silence. Mrs. Pember's voice had a marked sweetness
when she spoke to her daughter, which it lost entirely when she
addr