The rough giant of a sailor mused tenderly over this as he sent their boat forward with powerful strokes, and watched Edith Yorke bind on her Egyptian _coiffure_.
They did not row to the wharf, where the steamer had already arrived, but to a place a few rods above, where the sea had taken a good semicircular bite out of the land. Here a straggling bit of dilapidated woods had been allowed to remain by the vandals who had turned all the rest to grass and pasture, and a mossy ledge broke the teeth of the soft, gnawing waves.
Edith stepped lightly on shore. She was young, healthy, brave, and ignorant, and pain, though it called forth her tears, was stimulating to her. That pang had not yet come which could cut her heart in twain and let all the courage out.
"You are spry," Captain Cary said, smiling down upon her.
She smiled faintly in return, but said nothing.
Mrs. Rowan needed assistance at either hand. She had been broken by pain.
They stood awhile in the grove, Dick and the captain making some business arrangements. The _Halcyon_ was to remain four weeks at Seaton, and it was agreed that Dick should have that time to get his mother settled. Then the ship would touch at New York, where he would embark for the East again.
While they lingered, a large yellow coach, loaded with passengers, rattled past amid clouds of dust.
"There is no hurry," Dick said. "It will take an hour to get the freight off and on. But you needn't wait, captain. They'll be looking for you at the village."
The others drew near to Captain Cary at that, holding his hands and trying to utter their thanks.
"Oh! it's nothing," he said, much abashed. "I haven't done anything to be thanked for. Good-by! Keep up your courage, and you will come out first-rate. There's nothing like grit."
A subsiding ripple tossed his boat against the shore. At that hint he stepped in, dallied with the rope, then said, with a perfectly transparent affectation of having only just thought of it: "Oh! I've got a ring here that Edith is welcome to, if she will wear it. I brought it home for my niece; but the child is dead. It won't fit anybody else I know."
Mrs. Rowan immediately thanked him, and Edith smiled with childish pleasure. "You are very kind, Captain Cary," she said. "I always thought I would like to have a ring."