The Woman-Haters: a yarn of Eastboro twin-lights eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 272 pages of information about The Woman-Haters.

The Woman-Haters: a yarn of Eastboro twin-lights eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 272 pages of information about The Woman-Haters.

What he did see, however, was just as astonishing.  The landward door of the bungalow opened, and Mrs. Bascom, the housekeeper, stepped out into the yard.  She seemed to be listening and looking.  Apparently she must have heard something, for she moved away for some little distance and stood still.  Then, above the edge of the dune, showed Seth’s head and arm.  He beckoned to her.  She walked briskly across the intervening space, turned the ragged, grass-grown corner of the knoll and disappeared, also.  Brown, scarcely believing his eyes, waited and watched, but he saw no more.  Neither Seth nor the housekeeper came out from behind that dune.

But the substitute assistant had seen enough—­quite enough.  Seth Atkins, Seth, the woman-hater, the man who had threatened him with all sorts of penalties if he ever so much as looked at a female, was meeting one of the sex himself, meeting her on the sly.  What it meant Brown could not imagine.  Probably it explained the clay smears on the boots and Seth’s discomfiture of the morning; but that was immaterial.  The fact, the one essential fact, was this:  the compact was broken.  Seth had broken it.  Brown was relieved of all responsibility.  If he wished to swim in that cove, no matter who might be there, he was perfectly free to do it.  And he would do it, by George!  He had been betrayed, scandalously, meanly betrayed, and it would serve the betrayer right if he paid him in his own coin.  He darted down the attic stairs, ran down the path to the boathouse, hurriedly changed his clothes for his bathing suit, ran along the shore of the creek and plunged in.

Miss Graham waved a hand to him as he shook the water from his eyes.

Over behind the sand dune a more or less interesting interview was taking place.  Seth, having made sure that his whistles were heard and his signals seen, sank down in the shadow and awaited developments.  They were not long in coming.  A firm footstep crunched the sand, and Mrs. Bascom appeared.

“Well,” she inquired coldly, “what’s the matter now?”

Mr. Atkins waved an agitated hand.

“Set down,” he begged.  “Scooch down out of sight, Emeline, for the land sakes.  Don’t stand up there where everybody can see you.”

The lady refused to “scooch.”

“If I ain’t ashamed of bein’ seen,” she observed, “I don’t know why you should be.  What are you doin’ over here anyhow; skippin’ ’round in the sand like a hoptoad?”

The lightkeeper repeated his plea.

“Do set down, Emeline, please,” he urged.  “I thought you and me’d agreed that nobody’d ought to see us together.”

Mrs. Bascom gathered her skirts about her and with great deliberation seated herself upon a hummock.

“We did have some such bargain,” she replied.  “That’s why I can’t understand your hidin’ at my back door and whistlin’ and wavin’ like a young one.  What did you come here for, anyway?”

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The Woman-Haters: a yarn of Eastboro twin-lights from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.