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Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully, and with many self-disparaging sighs, what was the reason that young master somehow contrived to keep her far more in awe of him than he was of her.
One bright afternoon, when the sea lay all dead asleep, and the long, steady respiration of its tides scarcely disturbed the glassy tranquillity of its bosom, Mrs. Pennel sat at her kitchen-door spinning, when Captain Kittridge appeared. "Good afternoon, Mis' Pennel; how ye gettin' along?" "Oh, pretty well, Captain; won't you walk in and have a glass of beer?"
Suddenly the Captain sprang up, calling out, "Sure as I'm alive, there they be!" "Who?" exclaimed the children. "Why, Captain Pennel and Moses; don't you see?" And, in fact, on the outer circle of the horizon came drifting a line of small white-breasted vessels, looking like so many doves. "Them's 'em," said the Captain, while Mara danced for joy. "How soon will they be here?"
Pennel, nervously, "it was nothing but the wind, it always screeches like a child crying; or maybe it was the seals; seals will cry just like babes." "So they told her; but no, she insisted she knew the difference, it was a baby. Well, what do you think, when the storm cleared off, they found a baby's cradle washed ashore sure enough!" "But they didn't find any baby," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously.
June and July passed, and the lonely two lived a quiet life in the brown house. Everything was so still and fair no sound but the coming and going tide, and the swaying wind among the pine-trees, and the tick of the clock, and the whirr of the little wheel as Mrs. Pennel sat spinning in her door in the mild weather.
"Well, now, I don't think the old folks have the least idea on't," said Miss Ruey. "Only last Saturday Mis' Pennel was a-talkin' to me about the sheets and tablecloths she's got out a-bleachin'; and she said that the weddin' dress was to be made over to Mis' Mosely's in Portland, 'cause Moses he's so particular about havin' things genteel."
She is as chipper as she can be about Mara's weddin', and seems like she couldn't do too much. But laws, everybody seems to want to be a-doin' for her. Miss Emily was a-showin' me a fine double damask tablecloth that she was goin' to give her; and Mis' Pennel, she's been a-spinnin' and layin' up sheets and towels and tablecloths all her life, and then she has all Naomi's things.
Pennel, as she stood at the glass in her bedroom, carefully adjusting the respectable black silk shawl over her shoulders, and tying her neat bonnet-strings. "I s'pose," said Aunt Ruey, "that the notice of the funeral'll be gin out after sermon." "Yes, I think so," said Mrs. Pennel.
Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining the scene, the materials for which they were packing into baskets covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat which lay within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn, her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.
She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled in sleep. "Company jist sets this 'ere child crazy," said Miss Roxy; "it's jist her lonely way of livin'; a pity Mis' Pennel hadn't another child to keep company along with her."
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