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"Not meanin' ter be inquisitive or personal, Sister Blossy," a teasing twinkle appearing in his eye, "but this looks dretful familitary, this here handwritin' does. When I run the beach yew've heard me tell of the time I was on the Life-savin' Crew over ter Bleak Hill fer a spell my cap'n he had a fist jest like that. Useter make out the spickest, spannest reports.
I've got some things to tell you about that life-savin' station cruise. I've been thinkin' that I know the cap'n and most of the crew on the lightship off back of the Point. How'd you like to go aboard of her? You could get some yarns from those fellers that might be wuth hearin'." "I have no doubt I should. But I'm afraid I can't go.
He took off his hat and mittens and solemnly declined a proffered chair. "Cap'n Burgess," he said, "I've got somethin' to tell you somethin' awful. The whole life-savin' crew but one is drownded, and Cap'n Eri Hedge " An exclamation from Mrs. Snow interrupted him. The housekeeper clasped her hands together tightly and sank into a chair. She was very white. Elsie ran to her. "What is it, Mrs.
"We're all the time readin' 'bout fellers that work for the Gov'ment gittin' high sal'ries and doin' next to nothin'. Now there's a gang the life-savin' crew, I mean that does what you and me would call almighty hard work and git next to nothin' for it. Uncle Sam gits square there, it seems to me.
Then we sizzed out of the channel, over the flats on t'other side, and on toward Setuckit. "Never mind the rest of the ride. 'Twas all a sort of constant changin' sameness. I remember passin' a blurred life-savin' station, with three or maybe thirty blurred men jumpin' and laughin' and hollerin'. I found out afterwards that they'd been on the lookout for the bombshell for half an hour.
"Well, think it over, Miss Jane," he said, rising from his seat and reaching for his hat. "Plenty of time 'bout Archie. Life-savin' house won't be finished for the next two or three months; don't expect to git into it till June. Wonder, little Pond Lily, if the weather's goin' to be any warmer?" He slipped his hand under the child's chin and leaning over her head peered out of the window.
Which I wish I has stored by a pint of licker for everythin' Vance says! It would be a long spell before ever I'm driven to go ransackin' 'round to find one of them life-savin' stations, called by common consent, a 's'loon! This Vance don't do nothin' but talk; he's got that much to say, it gets in his way.
I carried in Bill Collins, and Lou Harvey and huh! 'sall over now. You ain't seen no wrecks. Don't ever think you have. I was here the night the Jennie Snow was out there. The sand has put his place on the blink all right. And then when it gets too God-for-saken for a life-savin' station, a lady takes it for a summer residence and then spends the winter. She's a cheerful one.
"I found the machine in th' road, right here by th' house; an' th' kid was in ut all by hisself. An' bein' humin an' respectible I brought 'im in to keep 'im from freezin' t' death," said The Hopper, as though repeating lines he was committing to memory. "They ain't nobody can say as I didn't. Ef I git pinched, that's my spiel to th' cops. It ain't kidnapin'; it's life-savin', that's wot ut is!
"Well, you'd ought to. It's a wonder of it's kind. I learned more things about life-savin' and 'longshore life from that drayma than you'd believe was possible. You'd have got some p'ints for your Cap'n Jim yarn from that play; you sartin would! Yes, indeed! Way I happened to go to it was on account of seein' a poster on a fence over nigh where that Moriarty tribe lived.
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