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Then, when they saw the girl skipping along the shore with kelp in her hands they said, mistrustfully, that she was "marked" for the sea, beyond the shadow of a doubt. "She hears well enough, when the sea speaks," Zinie Shadd averred. He had caught her listening in a shell with an intent expression.
Thereafter the Customs House twitted him, as if it knew the full extent of his shame. Zinie Shadd called after him to know if he had heard that voice from the sea yet, in his comings and goings. "Peter Loud was not so easy hung by the heels," that aged loiterer affirmed, "shipping as he did along with the lady herself, as bo's'n for Cap'n Sam Dreed."
It was a sore point with Sam Dreed that the ship chandler had that day effected a lien for labor on his ship, and the libel was nailed to the mast. "Now they'll scandalize each other," murmured Zinie Shadd. They were turned from that purpose only by the sudden passing at their backs of the woman in question, Caddie Sills. Quiet reigned.
"Plump she'll go in his canvas bag, along with his sea boots and his palm and needle, if she's not precious careful, with her shillyshallying," said Zinie Shadd. "I know the character of the man, from long acquaintance, and I know that what he says he'll do he'll do, and no holding off at arm's length, either, for any considerable period of time." Such was the situation of Cad Sills.
The girl would throw all the rest of us in a heap tomorrow for a firm hold of you, Rackby." He winked at Zinie Shadd, who swayed on his heels soberly. Rackby turned his eyes toward the black mound of Meteor, which lay like a shaggy stone Cerberus at the harbor's mouth. The star-pointed harbor was quiet at his feet.
It was all in a second's dreaming. "Gape and swallow," as Zinie Shadd said, from his end of the bench. The woman passed with a supercilious turn of her head away from them. "That's a foot-loose woman if ever there was one." With all her gift of badinage, she was a solitary soul. The men feared no less than they admired her.
"She will turn out to be a chip of the old block," said Zinie Shadd's wife, "or I shall never live to see the back of my neck." Jethro Rackby heard nothing of such prophecy. He lived at home. Here in his estimation was a being without guile, in whose innocence he might rejoice. His forethought was great and pathetic. He took care that she should learn to caress him with her finger tips alone.
"He always was a notional little man," the women said, on hearing this. The old bachelor was losing his wits. Such doctrine as he held made him out not one whit better off than Zinie Shadd, who averred that the heart of man was but a pendulum swaying in his bosom though how it still moved when he stood on his head was more than even Zinie Shadd could fathom, to be sure.
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