Isn't that
splendid!"
The sewing circles and the club and the noon and evening groups at the
postoffice had two new subjects for verbal dissection during the next
fortnight. This was, in its way, a sort of special Providence, for
this was the dull season, when there were no more wrecks alongshore or
schooners aground on the bars, and the boarders and cottagers from the
cities had not yet come to East Wellmouth. Also the opening of the High
Cliff House was getting to be a worn-out topic. So Emily Howes, her
appearance and behavior, and John Kendrick, HIS behavior and his
astonishing recklessness in attempting to wrest a portion of the county
law practice from Heman Daniels, were welcomed as dispensations and
discussed with gusto.
Emily came through the gossip mill ground fine, but with surprisingly
little chaff. She was "pretty as a picture," all the males agreed
upon that point. And even the females admitted that she was "kind of
good-lookin'," although Hannah Parker's diagnosis that she was "declined
to be consumptic" and Mrs. Larkin's that she was older than she "made
out to be," had some adherents. All agreed, however, that she knew how
to run a boarding-house and that she was destined to be the "salvation"
of Thankful Barnes' venture at the Cap'n Abner place.
Certainly she did prove herself to possess marked ability as a business
manager. Quietly, and without undue assertion, she reorganized the
affairs of the High Cliff House. No one detected any difference in
the quality of the meals served there, in their variety or ample
sufficiency.
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