.

"What else?"

"I can't fathom it. I knows what she means when she says she's
homesick; I've been that myself. But what's this about Squid Cove?
'Tis the queerest thing ever I knowed!"

Tommy Lark flushed.

"Woman," he demanded, eager and tense, "what does the maid say about
Squid Cove?"

"She says she's homesick for the cottage in Squid Cove. An' that's
every last word that she says."

"There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Sandy.

"No cottage there," Elizabeth's mother agreed, "t' be homesick for.
'Tis a very queer thing."

"There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Tommy Lark; "but there's
lumber for a cottage lyin' there on the rocks."

"What about that?"

"'Tis my lumber!" Tommy roared. "An' the maid knows it!"

* * * * *

II

THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN

* * * * *

II

THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN

Scalawag Run suspected the sentimental entanglement into which Fate
had mischievously cast Dickie Blue and pretty Peggie Lacey and there
abandoned them; and Scalawag Run was inclined to be more scornful than
sympathetic. What Dickie Blue should have done in the circumstances
was transparent to every young blade in the harbor--an instant, bold
behavior, issuing immediately in the festive popping of guns at a
wedding and a hearty charivari thereafter; and those soft devices to
which pretty Peggy Lacey should have resorted without scruple in her
own relief, were not unknown, you may be sure, to the wise, whispering
maids of the place. It was too complacently agreed that the situation,
being left to the direction and mastery of Time, would proceed to a
happy conclusion as a matter of course. There would be a conjunction
of the light of the moon, for example, with the soft, love-lorn
weather of June--the shadows of the alders on the winding road to
Squid Cove and the sleepy tinkle of the goats' bells dropping down
from the slopes of The Topmast into the murmur of the sea. There had
been just such favorable auspices of late, however--June moonlight and
the music of a languorous night, with Dickie Blue and pretty Peggy
Lacey meandering the shadowy Squid Cove road together; and the
experience of Scalawag Run was still defied--no blushes and laughter
and shining news of a wedding at Scalawag Run.

Dickie Blue, returning from the Squid Cove road, found his father,
Skipper John, waiting at the gate.

"Well?" Skipper Joh