A chill wind came from the sea and the
surf at the foot of the bluff moaned and splashed and sighed.
Thankful sighed also.
"What's the matter?" asked Winnie S.
"Oh, nothin' much. I wish I was a prophet, that's all. I'd like to be
able to look ahead a year."
Winnie S. whistled. "Judas priest!" he said. "So'd I. But if I'd see
myself drivin' this everlastin' rig-out I'd wished I hadn't looked. I
don't know's I'd want to see ahead as fur's that, after all."
Thankful sighed again. "I don't know as I do, either," she admitted.
CHAPTER VII
March, so to speak, blew itself out; April came and went; May was here.
And on the seventeenth of May the repairs on the "Cap'n Abner place"
were completed. The last carpenter had gone, leaving his shavings and
chips behind him. The last painter had spilled his last splash of paint
on the sprouting grass beneath the spotless white window sills. The last
paper-hanger had departed. Winnie S. was loading into what he called a
"truck wagon" the excelsior and bagging in which the final consignment
of new furniture had been wrapped during its journey from Boston. About
the front yard Kenelm Parker was moving, rake in hand. In the kitchen
Imogene, the girl from the Orphans' Home in Boston, who had been engaged
to act as "hired help," was arranging the new pots and pans on the
closet shelf and singing "Showers of Blessings" cheerfully if not
tunefully.
Yes, the old "Cap'n Abner place" was rejuvenated and transformed and on
the following Monday it would be the "Cap'n Abner place" no longer: it
would then become the "High Cliff House" and open its doors to hoped-for
boarders, either of the "summer" or "all-the-year" variety.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121