Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/137

Rh Garth shook his head and bent over the golden filigree bracelet in his hand.

"No," he said gently, "not ever."

Mrs. Bassett wiped her spectacles and straightened them.

"You set here," she said, "an' I'll be right back in."

So Garth sat and fingered the treasures which the old seamen had brought from the ends of the world half a century and more ago, and dreamed of the way of a ship on the seas and of enchanted islands in far waters. And he was so deep in his imaginings that when Mrs. Bassett put down a tray on the table beside him, he started.

"Jest a sip o' current wine," she explained. T ain't really wine,—jest juice an' sugar; 't won't hurt ye. No, I don' keer fer any right now, thank you." For there was only one glass on the tray beside the saucer of hermit cookies.

It was a very wonderful glass. There could hardly have been more than one in the world, Garth thought. It was quite different from the glasses at Silver Shoal Light, for it was red, fading to yellow at the top, and it had a gold rim and golden flowers painted upon it.

T was my mother's," Mrs. Bassett told