Page:Stimson--Pirate gold.djvu/88

78 debits and credits like a stage procession. But now he made no fiction about the vanished business.

It was characteristic of Jamie that still he did not hanker for more money. He recognized his adopted daughter's need for sympathy, for emotions, even for love, if you will; but yet it did not occur to him that he might earn more money. His salary was ample, and out of it he had made some savings. And Mercedes had that impatience of details, that ennui of money matters, that even worldly women show, who care for results, not processes.

It had always been the custom of the McMurtagh family to pass the summers, like the winters, in the little house on Salem Street; but this year Jamie rented a cottage at Nantasket. He told the Bowdoins nothing of this move until they asked him about it, observing that he regularly took the boat. To Jamie it was the next thing to Nahant, which was of course out of the question. But the queer old clerk was not fitted to shine in any society, and Mercedes found it hard to make her way alone. They wandered about the beach, and