Excerpt
Chapter I.
In Tarpaulin and oilskins she did not look like a Judith. Easily she might have been a Joseph or a James. So it was not really to be wondered at that the little girl in the dainty clothes—the little girl from The Hotel—should say, “Why!”
“What is your name?” the Dainty One had asked.
“Judith Lynn,” had answered the boy-one in oilskins.
“Why!” Then, as if catching herself up at the impoliteness of such a little word in such a surprised tone—“I mean, please excuse me for thinking you were a boy,” the little Dainty One had added, in considerable embarrassment. And Judith had laughed—Judith’s laughs were rare, but the crisp, salty brightness of the sea was always in them. The sea was in everything about Judith.
“I don’t wonder!” laughed Judith. “Me, with these togs on! But I guess you’d be a boy when you went out to your traps—you can’t ’tend traps in skirts. Blossom calls me Judas with these on!”
It was strange how suddenly the rather big voice—a voice has to be big to compete with the voice of the sea—grew soft and tender at the name of Blossom.
In Judith Lynn’s rough, hard, salt-savored life Blossom was the one thing sweet and beautiful. Blossom was the little frail wisp of a child that Judith loved. This other child, here on the sand, watching her with friendly wonder, reminded her a little of Blossom. Anyway, they were both sweet and beautiful.
“Traps?” queried this other child. “I didn’t know there were mice in the ocean!—you were going out on the ocean, weren’t you?”
Again Judith’s rare, bright laugh. Children were such funny things!—Blossom was, too.
“Lobster-traps,” she explained, when the laugh had laughed itself out. “I’m going out to mine to get the lobsters. Out there where those little specks of white are bobbing ’round on the water—don’t you see?”
“I see some little specks—yes, they’re a-bobbing! Are those traps?”
“Mercy, no! The traps are sunk ’way down to the bottom o’ the sea! Those are nothing but the little wooden floats that tell me where the traps are. I couldn’t go hunting all over the bay, you know.”
“No—oh, no, you couldn’t go hunting all over the bay,” repeated the small, puzzled voice. The Dainty One was distinctly interested. “I s’pose, prob’ly, every one of those little white specks has got a fish line to it. I hope they’ve all got bites. Oh, my suz! Here comes Elise. Elise is always a-coming!” with a long sigh.
Elise was slender and tall, in cap and apron. She walked with the stride of authority. A frown of displeasure was getting visibler and visibler on her face, the child noticed with another sigh. Elise was ’most always a-frowning.
“Good-by. I—I guess I’d better go and meet her,” the Dainty One said hurriedly. “She isn’t quite as cross when you go and meet her. It helps.”
But the child came back again to Judith Lynn. She held out one little sun-browned, sea-browned hand.
“I’m happy to have seen you,” she said, with soft graciousness, as if Judith were a duchess in laces instead of a boy-girl in fisherman’s togs....