Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/54

 always, because of his gait and the masterful way he held his head."

He had passed on up from the wharf, and had mounted the steep, gray cobbles of Chesley Street, and the door of the waiting house had swung open between its pillars to admit him and had as quickly closed. Mrs. Titcomb remembered passing the still Ingram mansion and looking up to that closed door with a sort of awe, holding her mother's hand the tighter. She was silent now, looking out through her flower-bright bow-window, thinking, perhaps, of a time much later when another battered ship crept in with the bare news that the Honoria had been sighted, a derelict in the Agulhas, and that Matthew Titcomb would never make port again.

And now, with all these memories, it was well on into the afternoon before Jane and Mrs. Titcomb realized it, so then Jane must stop for tea. Not in the schoolroom, but in the little, low, front parlor—cinnamon cakes, and candied lemon-peel, and fragrant China tea. And, with it all, something indefinable had happened in the relationship between these two.

"I don't blame you for thinking about it,"