“There’s got to be lobsters!” Judith stormed, jerking up her traps one after the other. “There shall be lobsters!”
But she rowed back with the old brown dory almost as empty as when she had rowed it toilsomely out to her traps.
There were but three Lynns in the small home upshore. Two years ago there had been six, but father and the boys, one day, had gone out of sight beyond the bay and had never come into sight again. It is the sad way with those “who go down to the sea in ships.”
Judith was the only man left to ’tend the traps and fish in the safer waters of the bay. At fourteen one is young to begin toil like that. Even at sixteen one is not old. But Judith’s heart was as strong as her pair of brown, boy-muscled arms. She and the old dory were well acquainted with each other.
To-day Judith did not hurry homeward across the stretch of bright water. She let the old dory lag along almost at its own sweet will. For Judith dreaded to go home with her news of the poor little “haul” of lobsters. She knew so well how mother would sigh and how little Blossom would try to smile. Blossom always tried to smile when the news was bad. That was the Blossomness of her, Judith said fondly.
“That’s Lynn luck,” mother would sigh. Poor mother, who was too worn and sad to try to smile!
“Never mind, Judy,” Blossom’s little, brave smile would say. “Never mind – who cares!” But Judy knew who cared.
Strange fancies came sometimes to the fisherman-girl in the great dory, out there on the bay. Alone, with the sky above and the sea beneath, the girl let her thoughts have loose rein and built her frail castles in the salt, sweet air. Out there, she had been a beautiful princess in a fairy craft, going across seas to her kingdom; she had been a great explorer, traveling to unknown worlds; she had been a pirate – a millionaire in his yacht – a sailor in a man-of-war. She had always had a dream-Blossom with her, on her wonder-trips, and sometimes they were altogether Blossom-dreams. Like to-day – to-day it was a Blossom-dream, a wistful little one with not much heart in it. They seemed to be drifting home, away from something beautiful behind them that they had wanted very much. They had been sailing after it – in the dream – with their hands stretched out to reach it. And it had beckoned them on – and further on – with its golden fingers, till at last it had vanished into the sunset, down behind the sea, and left them empty-handed after all. They had had to turn back without it. And Blossom – the little dream-Blossom in the dream – had tried to smile.
“Never mind, Judy,” she had said. “Never mind – who cares!” But they had both cared so much!
Then quite suddenly Judith’s fancy had changed the dream from a sad one to a glad one. She had rested lazily on her great black oars and painted another picture on her canvas of sea and sky – this time of Blossom riding way over a beautiful glimmery sea-road in a little wheel-chair, soft-cushioned and beautiful. She, Judith, followed in the old dory, and Blossom laughed with delight and called back over her shoulder, “See me! See me!”
A whiff of night-breeze warned Judith that it was growing late and the dream-fancies must stop. She leaned over the side of the dory and pretended to drop them, one at a time, into the sea. That was another of her odd little whimsies.
“Good-by, sad dream – good-by, glad dream,” she said. “You will never go ashore. You will always stay out here in the sea where I drop you – unless I decide to dream you over again some day. If I do, good-by till then.” For Judith never dreamed her day-dreams on land. They were a part of the sea and the sea-sky and the old black dory.
She must make her trip to the Hotel with her poor little haul of lobsters, for she had promised all she got to Mrs. Ben. But for a wonder Judith’s pride deserted her, and she decided to tramp away down the beach in her fisherman-clothes. When had she done that before! When hadn’t she walked the weary little distance inshore and back, to and from her home, for the sake of going down the beach in her own girl-things. But to-night – “Never mind, Judy – who cares!” she said to herself, with a shrug. Let Mrs. Ben laugh – let the fine people lounging about laugh – let everybody laugh! Who cared? To-night Judith was tired, and the stout little heart had gone out of her.
“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ben, in her kitchen door. But the sober face under the old tarpaulin checked her. Mrs. Ben’s heart was tender.
“I shouldn’t think I looked very landish,” Judith retorted. “And I guess you won’t say ‘land!’ when you see your lobsters. That’s every one I got to-day, Mrs. Ben!”
But Mrs. Ben said “Land!” again. Then, with an unexpected whirl of her big, comely person, she had her hands on the boy-girls’ shoulders and was gently pushing her toward a chair by the window.
“You poor dear, you! Never mind the lobsters. Just you set there in that chair and eat some o’ my tarts! You look clean tuckered out.”
“Not clean tuckered,” laughed Judith rather tremulously. It was good to be pushed about like that by big, kind hands. And how good the tarts were! She sank into the chair with a grateful sigh.
“I don’t suppose you can be expected to bring lobsters when there ain’t any in the traps! All is, the folks ’ll have to eat tarts!” Mrs. Ben’s folks were the people who lounged about in gay summer clothes. Judith could see them out of the window as she ate her tarts.
Some ladies were sitting on the doorsteps very near by, and their voices drifted in to Judith with intervals of silence. She began to notice what the voices were saying. They were talking about a little figure in dainty white that was circling about not far away, and the little figure in white was Judith’s acquaintance of the beach.
One of the voices was a mother-voice – Judith was sure of that from the tenderness in it. The other voice was just a plain voice, Judith decided. It sounded interested and curious, and it began to ask strange questions about the dainty little figure. Judith grew interested, too – then, very interested indeed.
Suddenly Judith caught her breath in an inarticulate little cry. For she could hear what the mother-voice was answering.
Chapter II
“It seems very wonderful,” the cool, interested voice said, a little more interested, if anything.
“It seems glorious!” broke in the mother-voice; and the throb in it beat upon Judith’s heart through the waves of air between them. Judith’s heart was throbbing, too.
“You can’t think how it ‘seems,’ – you don’t know anything about it!” the earnest, tremulous voice went on. “How can anyone know who never had a little daughter?”
“I had one once.” The other voice now was soft and earnest.
“But she walked. Your little daughter walked. How can anyone know whose little daughter always walk – ”
“She never walked.” It was very soft now, and the throb had crept into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith’s heart. “I only had her a year.”
They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched.
“Oh! – then you can know,” the first voice said, after a tiny silence. “I will tell you all about it – there have only been a few I have wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and – and – sacred.”
“I know,” the other said.
“But you must begin right at the beginning, with me – at the time when my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to learn to walk. That is where my story begins.”
“And mine