"_H.H.!_ What does that mean? I wonder."
"May-be the name of the owner," answered Clarice, timidly.
She was thinking, not of what the letters might have meant to others,
but of what they had come to signify to her and Luke.
"Who knows?" answered her mother; and she stood musing and absent, and
her face had a solemn look.
Clarice now took the basket to the fireplace and held it there till it
was dried. With the drying the colors brightened and the sand was easily
brushed away; but many a stain remained on the once dainty white silk
lining; the basket would hardly have been recognized by its owner.
Having dried and cleansed it as well as she was able, Clarice laid it
away in a chest for safe-keeping, and then ate her breakfast, standing.
After that, she went out to work again until the tide should come in.
She left the chain with her mother, but the ring she had tied to a cord,
and hung it around her neck.
By this time the children of the fishermen were all out, and the most
industrious of them at work. They scattered among the rocks and crags,
and wandered up and down the coast three miles, gathering sea-weed,
which it was their custom to dry, and then carry to town, the Port, not
many miles distant, where it was purchased by the glassmakers.
Clarice had neither brother nor sister, and she made little of the
children of the neighboring fishermen; for her life was one of toil, and
her inheritance seemed very different from theirs, though they were all
poor, and ate the crusts of labor.
Her father, had Nature only given him what she seemed to have intended
at the outset, might have been as successful a fisherman as lived at
the Bay. But he trusted to luck, and contrived to make half of what he
earned a serious damage to him. The remainder was little enough for the
comfort of his family, small though that family was.
Briton was a good fellow, everybody said. They meant that he was always
ready for sport, and time-wasting, and drinking, and that sort of
generosity which is the shabbiest sort of selfishness. They called him
"Old Briton," but he was not, by many, the oldest man in Diver's Bay;
he might have been the wickedest, had he not been the jolliest, and
incapable of hiding malice in his heart. And if I said he was out and
out the wickedest, I should request that people would refrain from
lifting up their hands in horror, on account of the poor old fellow. We
all know--alas, perhaps, we all love--wickeder souls than could have
been produced from among the older fishermen, had all their sins been
concentrated in one individual.
Old Briton was what the people called a lucky fisherman. In seasons when
he chose to work, the result was sufficiently obvious, to himself and
others, to astonish both. But even in the best seasons he was a bad
manager. He trusted everybody, and found, to his astonishment, how few
deserve to be trusted.
Dame Briton was a stout, loud-talking woman, whom experience had not
softened in her ways of speech or thought or action. She was generally
at strife with her husband, but the strife was most illogical. It did
not admit of a single legitimate deduction in the mind of a third
person. It seemed sometimes as if the pair were possessed of the
instincts of those animals which unite for mutual destruction, and as if
their purpose were to fulfil their destiny with the utmost rapidity.
In the years when Dame Briton, by nature proud and ambitious, was
putting forth the most successful efforts she ever made at decent
housekeeping, endeavoring to transform her husband into such a person as
he was not born to be, striving hard to work her will,--in those years
Clarice was born.
Is the pearl a product of disease?
Clarice grew up in the midst of influences not the purest or most
elevating. She was not by nature gay, but silent, truthful, and
industrious. She was no coward by nature, and her training made her
brave and hardy. Sometimes Old Briton called her his boy, and exacted
from her the service of a son. Dame Briton did not quarrel with him for
that; she was as proud as the fisherman of any feat of skill or strength
or courage performed by Clarice. In their way they were both fond of the
child, but their fondness had strange manifestation; and of much tender
speech, or fondling, or praise, the girl stood in no danger.
Idleness especially was held up before her, from the outset, as the most
destructive evil and dire iniquity of which human creature was capable;
and Old Briton, lounging about all day with his pipe in his mouth,--by
no means a rare spectacle,--did not interfere with the lesson the
child's mother enforced. Winter and summer there was enough for the
little feet and hands to do. So, as Clarice grew up, she earned the best
reputation for industry of any girl in Diver's Bay.
Before she became the praise of the serious Bay people, Luke Merlyn's
bright eyes were on the little girl, and he had a settled habit of
seeking times and opportunities for quiet talks with her. He liked to
ask and follow her advice in many matters. Many a heavy basket of weeds
had he helped her carry home from the rocks; many a shell and pebble had
he picked up in his coast-work, when he went beyond the limits of the
Bay,--because he knew the good girl had a liking for every pretty thing.
If Clarice Briton was the finest girl, Luke Merlyn, beyond question, was
the most promising fellow in this little village of fishermen. He was
strong, active, ready for any undertaking that required a bold spirit
and firm hand,--was quicker in thought and readier in speech than any
lad about. He had a little personal vanity,--and good looks to encourage
the same; but he had besides a generous heart, and the conviction was
general, whether expressed or not, that in Luke a man was growing up who
would some day take the lead among the fishermen of Diver's Bay. He had
a livelier fancy, a more active imagination, than any lad thereabout;
these qualities of mind, united to his courage and warmth of heart,
seemed to point toward a future worth arriving at.