"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the kitchen.
Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an unintelligible story of the day.
"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining room, Marian and Spencer at his heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh, you aren't dressed yet."
"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a moist forehead. "Let's eat."
"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?" Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair.
Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy--I should have dressed this afternoon----"
"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?"
"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between Letty's demands for more story."
"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick curiosity.
"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some about Daddy, and mostly about--me." Catherine was serving the salad. She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow and beautifully exact.
"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A lot more."
The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco. Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr" of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.
"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe, peeking at the intruders."
She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path slipped. Charles was coming back.