“I heard it down at the harbor, Thyra.
Mike McCready’s vessel, the Nora Lee,
was just in from the Magdalens. Ches and Joe
got capsized the night of the storm, but they hung
on to their boat somehow, and at daybreak they were
picked up by the Nora Lee, bound for Quebec.
But she was damaged by the storm and blown clear
out of her course. Had to put into the Magdalens
for repairs, and has been there ever since.
The cable to the islands was out of order, and no
vessels call there this time of year for mails.
If it hadn’t been an extra open season the Nora
Lee wouldn’t have got away, but would have
had to stay there till spring. You never saw
such rejoicing as there was this morning at the harbor,
when the Nora Lee came in, flying flags at the
mast head.”
“And Chester—where is he?”
demanded Thyra.
Carl and Cynthia looked at each other.
“Well, Thyra,” said the latter, “the
fact is, he’s over there in our yard this blessed
minute. Carl brought him home from the harbor,
but I wouldn’t let him come over until we had
prepared you for it. He’s waiting for
you there.”
Thyra made a quick step in the direction of the gate.
Then she turned, with a little of the glow dying
out of her face.
“No, there’s one has a better right to
go to him first. I can atone to him—thank
God, I can atone to him!”
She went into the house and called Damaris.
As the girl came down the stairs Thyra held out her
hands with a wonderful light of joy and renunciation
on her face.
“Damaris,” she said, “Chester has
come back to us—the sea has given him back
to us. He is over at Carl White’s house.
Go to him, my daughter, and bring him to me!”
When Sara Currie married Jack Churchill I was broken-hearted...or
believed myself to be so, which, in a boy of twenty-two,
amounts to pretty much the same thing. Not that
I took the world into my confidence; that was never
the Douglas way, and I held myself in honor bound
to live up to the family traditions. I thought,
then, that nobody but Sara knew; but I dare say, now,
that Jack knew it also, for I don’t think Sara
could have helped telling him. If he did know,
however, he did not let me see that he did, and never
insulted me by any implied sympathy; on the contrary,
he asked me to be his best man. Jack was always
a thoroughbred.
I was best man. Jack and I had always been bosom
friends, and, although I had lost my sweetheart, I
did not intend to lose my friend into the bargain.
Sara had made a wise choice, for Jack was twice the
man I was; he had had to work for his living, which
perhaps accounts for it.
