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Updated: May 28, 2025
When, an hour later, the swimming teacher, his guilty conscience pricking him, and the knowledge of having been false to his superior strong within him, came sneaking into the kitchen, he was startled and horrified to find the lightkeeper awake and dressed. Mentally he braced himself for the battery of embarrassing questions which, he felt sure, he should have to answer.
"And, for my part, if ever you catch me gettin' confectionery with a woman, I . . . well, don't stop to pray over me; just drown me, that's all I ask. It's a bargain. Shake!" So they shook, with great solemnity. And now affairs at the lights settled down into a daily routine in which the lightkeeper and his helper each played his appointed part.
He was anxious concerning Atkins. Seth had not returned, and the substitute assistant was certain that some accident must have befallen him. The storm had been severe, but it would take more than weather to keep the lightkeeper from his post; if he was all right he would have managed to return somehow. Brown rang the bell time and time again, but got no response.
The lightkeeper had been suffering for an opportunity to blow off steam, and the opportunity was here. Benijah withered under the blast. "S-sh-sh! sh-sh!" he pleaded. "Land sakes, Seth Atkins, stop it! I don't blame you for bein' mad, but you nor nobody else sha'n't talk to me that way. I'll fix your horse in five minutes. Yes, sir, in five minutes. Shut up now, or I won't do it at all!"
He notes, with the same dip of ink, that "the brasses were not clean, and the persons of the keepers not trig"; and thus we find him writing to a culprit: "I have to complain that you are not cleanly in your person, and that your manner of speech is ungentle, and rather inclines to rudeness. You must therefore take a different view of your duties as a lightkeeper."
"Set down," he begged. "Scooch down out of sight, Emeline, for the land sakes. Don't stand up there where everybody can see you." The lady refused to "scooch." "If I ain't ashamed of bein' seen," she observed, "I don't know why you should be. What are you doin' over here anyhow; skippin' 'round in the sand like a hoptoad?" The lightkeeper repeated his plea.
"Jerushy!" exclaimed the lightkeeper. "This is kind of unexpected, ain't it? What's got into her to make her so accommodatin'?" "Godfreys mighty!" was the dazed reply, "I don't know. This as fast as you can drive? Hurry up, afore she changes her mind." So it happened that Mr. Pepper was in Bayport with the rest, awaiting the stage which was bringing Trumet's latest celebrity from Sandwich.
"Rubbish! I'd do as much for a pig any day. There! you've got your shirt; now you'd better go home." She forced the pan of cookies into his hand and moved off. The lightkeeper hesitated. "I I'll fetch the pan back to-morrer," he called after her in a loud whisper. The cookies appeared on the table that evening. Brown noticed them at once. "When did you bake these?" he asked.
"Well, sister, we are safe, I really believe. In spite of," with a glare at the lightkeeper, "this person's insane recklessness and brutality. Now I will take you ashore and out of his presence." Seth rose to his feet. "Didn't I tell you," he demanded, "not to move till I said the word? Emeline, stay right here." Bennie D. stared at the speaker; then at his sister-in-law.
Bennie D.'s name had scarcely been mentioned during the various interviews between the lightkeeper and his wife. She had said her first husband's brother had been in New York for two years, and her manner of saying it led Seth to imagine a permanent separation following some sort of disagreement. And now! and now!
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