Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/304

294 light-house and the town was cut off, and the poor mother lay awake by night, and walked the floor by day, praying that all might be well with Tilly. But when, early in May, Tilly came home one afternoon, looking as fresh and blooming as a rose, and sat down at the melodeon and played "The Soldier's Joy, with Variations," Mrs Bennet was more than repaid for all she had borne. The six months had told on Tilly in many ways. She had smartened up in the matter of clothes; wore bows like other girls, and liked a bit of color in her hair; had learned to talk in a freer way, and could even toss her head a little, when a young man spoke to her. All the little awkward arts of the Provincetown belles Tilly had observed, and in a manner caught. Yet she was not spoiled. She was glad to come home: her mother was still more to her than all the rest of the world; and when Mrs. Bennet saw this she was content. Captain 'Lisha took little notice one way or another of either of them. His heart had always been, and always would be, on the sea. He tended and scrubbed and loved the light-house as he used to tend and love his ship. He always called the light "she," and if a point of its machinery seemed clogged, worried and fussed over "her" as another man might over a woman who was ill. But of the two women whose days were spent on this rock because of him, and whose whole lives revolved around him as husband and father, he thought comparatively little,