Flood Tide

is short-sighted blue eyes and his appealing smile, an affection peculiarly tender; and if they sometimes were wont to observe that although Willie po

sympathy, and his honesty. Willie probably could not have dissembled had he tried, and fortunately his life was of so simple and transparent a trend that little lay hidden beneath its crystalline exterior. What he was he was. When baffled by phenomena he would scratch his thin locks and with a s

sal esteem and tenderness that whenever the stooping figure with its ruddy cheeks, soft white hair, and gentle smile made its appearanc

al hour had become what she termed "chronical" and severely taxed her forbearance; or that since she was a creature of human limitations she did at times protest when the chowder stood forgotten in the tureen until it was of Arctic

e, you'd quit your dream

string in one hand and the hammer in the other, and peering repr

ould you? They're about all I've got. If it warn'

d instantly transform Celestina's irritati

n't you got more friends than anybody in this tow

I'd only had the chance to learn somethin' when I was a youngster I wouldn't have to be goin' it blind now like I do. There's times, Ce

ke to know how they'd get along if it warn't fur you. Ain't you doctorin' an' fixin' up things for the whole of Cap

used thou

s better ways to go at it than blunderin' along as I have to, an' sometimes I can't help wishin' I knew what the right way is. There must be folks that know how to do in ha

egan to roc

conversation drift into a reflective channel that whenever she found Willie indulging in reveries she was wont

waited 'til his dream was over an' done with. S'pose I am put out a bit-'twon't hurt me. If I don't care enough fo

o Wilton in general nor to Celestina i

'em; they come to me, hittin' me broadside like as if they'd been shot out of a gun. There's times," ambled on the quiet voice, "when they'll wake me out of a sound sleep an' give me no peace 'til I've got up and 'tended to 'em. That notion of hitchin' a string to the slide in the stove door so'st yo

e; it's saved lots of s

t's all there was to it. Good or bad, I had to carry it

saw and hammer during the wee small hours of the night to question the verity of the statement. Therefore she was quite ready to agree that there was no peace for Willie, o

lonely little bachelor and had discovered that cottage to be one gigantic spider's web, her initial impression was that strings played far too important a part in the househ

pull of a cord lifted the iron latch to admit Oliver Goldsmith, the Maltese cat, whenever he rattled for entrance. There was a string that hoiste

nal tote to tote!" Willie wo

in Celestina's room, and whisked Willie's slippers forth from their hiding place beneath the stairs; not to mention myriad red, blue, green, yellow, and purple string

but sustained upon its taut line a small wooden box that could be pulled back and forth at will and convey from one abode to the other not only written communications but also such diminutive articles as pipes, tobacco, spectacles, balls of string, boxes of tack

sed it at the time, the blanket while in process of locomotion had for some unfathomable reason dragged in its wake all the other bedclothes, freeing them from their moorings and submerging his head in a smothering weight of disorganized sheets and counterpanes only to leave his poor shivering body a prey to the unfriendly elements. An attack of lumbago that rendered him helpless from January until March followed and had decided Jan that inventors were born, not made. Thereafter he had been content to abandon the realm of research to his comrade and allow Willie to furnish the inspiration for further creative

other letters after his name as any of those fellers that graduate from colleges! He's a wonder, Willie Spence is-a walkin' w

little old inventor to state publicly what they really thought of the strings, the nails, the spools, the wires, and the pulleys, in private they d

gged up," Captain Phineas Taylor prophesied impressively to Zenas Henry as the two

amid which she moved, and fearing Willie's wrath if she should sunder her fetters she had been forced to stand captive and helplessly witness a newly made sponge cake burn to a crisp in the oven. She had hoped the ignominious episode would not reach the outside world; but as Wilton was possessed of a miracu

that this tranquil exterior concealed, as did Tim Linkinwater's, unsuspected depths of ferocity, Wilton had yet to encounter its lionlike fury. Instead the mild little inventor, with his spools and his pulleys,

y pillows and bedding had been secured, and she had drawn a few peaceful breaths therein a new baby had arrived and she had been ousted from her resting place and compelled to surrender it to the more recent comer. Ever since she had been shunted from pillar to post, sleeping on cots, on couches, in folding beds and in hammocks, and keeping her meager possessions in paste-board boxes tucked away beneath tables and bureaus. Poised on the ragged edge of domesticity she continue

quite as happy in one place as in another. Having thus washed their hands of her they proceeded to sell the Morton homestead and each one pocket his share of the proceeds. Very scanty this inheritance was, so scanty that it compelled Celestina to begin a rotation around the village, where in return for shelter she filled in domestic gaps of var

rom deserting her father and the children left to her care. In fact one persistent swain wh

settle myself," replied she firmly. "I can't

ow the golden season of mating-time was past, and although she was still a p

than from the male. However that may be, the stigma, merited or unmerited, had become so firmly branded upon Celestina that it could not be effaced. She may to some extent have brought it upon herself, for certain it was that she never kicked against the pricks or tried to shape her circumstances more in ac

ad kept a roof above her head. She had been just sixty years of age when Willie Spence's sister had died and left him alone in the wee cottage on the Harbor Road, and all Wilton had begun to speculate as to what was to become of him. Willie was as dependent as an infant; the village gossips who knew everything knew that. From childhood he had been looked afte

he house of the web that for years he had spun, the symbols of dreams that had been his chief delight. Should he go to the Eldridges there could be no more inventing, for Jan's wife was a hard, practical woman who had scant sympathy with Willie's "idees." Nevertheless one redeeming

With this simple introduction she had taken off her hat and coat, donned an ample blue-and-white pinafore, and set to work. Fascinated Willie watched her deft movements. Now and then she smiled at him but she did not speak and neither did he; nor, he noticed, did she disturb his strings or comment on their inconvenience. When twilight came and

t less accommodating sisters could have boasted. For disorder and confusion never kept Celestina awake nights or prevented her from partaking of three hearty meals a day as it would have Abbie Brewster or Deborah Howland. So long as things were clean, their being an inch or two, or even a foot, out of plumb did

are me every time I wash a dish. Ain't you

ed would be as mil

the inventor would respond. "Like as not both

ht forget to come to his meals,-forget, in fact, whether he had eaten them or not; he might venture forth into the village with one gray sock and one blue one; or when part way to the post-office become lost in reverie and return home again without ever reaching his dest

speculated as to whether this mental attitude toward all womanhood was one Willie himself had evolved or whether it was the result of standards instilled into his sensitive consciousness by the women who had been his companions through life,-his mother,

the day when at dinner the little old man had choked violently, turning purple in the face in his fight for bre

wrong way, Tiny? Think-of-the-things-I've-swall

ed of life. He never emphasized the exceptions but

er men in the hamlet whose names had passed into diminutives. There was, for example, Seth Crocker, whose wife explained that

ar niche in Wilton and a

s convenience; and that when she was awakened at midnight by a rhythmic hammering which portended that the inventor had once again "got kitched with a new idee" she smiled indulgently in the darkness and instead o