Page:The New Penelope.djvu/152

 turned wearily away. She left her guest gazing into the fire and still steaming in a very unsavory manner, lighted a candle, set it in the window, and opened the door to look out. What she saw made her start back with a cry of affright, and hurriedly close the door.

"Your boat is this side of the hitching-post, and the water is all around us!"

"An' it is not yet eight o'clock. I guessed it would be so."

Just then, a fearful blast shook the house, and the boat's chain clanked nearer. Willie caught his mother's hand, and shivered all over with terror. "O, mamma!" he sobbed, "will the water drown our house?"

"I hope not, my boy. It may come up and wet our warm, dry floor; but I trust it will not give us so much trouble. We do not like wet feet, do we, Willie?"

Then the mother, intent on soothing the child, sat down in the fire-light and held his curly head in her lap, whispering little cooing sentences into his ear whenever he grew restless; while her strange, unbidden guest continued to evaporate in one corner of the hearth, sitting with his hands on his knees, staring at something in the coals. There was no attempt at conversation. There had never, until this evening, been a dozen words exchanged between these neighbors, who knew each other by sight and by reputation well enough. Joe Chillis was not a man whose personal appearance—so far as clothes went—nor whose reputation, would commend him to women generally—the one being shabby and careless, the other smacking of recklessness and whisky. Not that any great harm was known of the man; but that he was out of the pale of polite society even in this new and isolated corner of the earth. He had had an Indian wife in his youth; being more accustomed to the ways of her people than of his own. For nearly twenty years he had lived a thriftless, bachelor existence, known among men, and by hearsay among women, as a noted story-teller, and