The coach stopped before the post-office, and Louise got out briskly with her bag.  The driver, backing down from his seat, said to her: 

“If ye wait till I git out the mail I’ll drive ye inter the tavern yard in style.  I bait the horses there.”

“Oh, I’ll walk,” she told him brightly.  “I can get dinner there, I suppose?”

“Warn’t they expectin’ you at Cap’n Abe’s?” the stage driver asked.  “I want to know!  Oh, yes.  You can buy your dinner at the tavern.  But ’tain’t a long walk to Cap’n Abe’s.  Not fur beyond the Mariner’s Chapel.”

Louise thanked him.  A young man was coming down the steps of the post-office.  He was a more than ordinarily good-looking young fellow, deeply tanned, with a rather humorous twist to his shaven lips, and with steady blue eyes.  He was dressed in quite common clothing:  the jersey, high boots, and sou’wester of a fisherman.

He looked at Louise, but not offensively.  He did not remove his hat as he spoke.

“I heard Noah say you wished to go to Cap’n Abe’s store,” he observed with neither an assumption of familiarity nor any bucolic embarrassment.  “I am bound that way myself.”

“Thank you!” she said with just enough dignity to warn him to keep his distance if he chanced to be contemplating anything familiar.  “But I shall dine at the hotel first.”

A brighter color flooded into his cheeks and Louise felt that she might have been too sharp with him.  She mended this by adding: 

“You may tell me how to get to the Shell Road and Mr. Silt’s, if you will be so kind.”

He smiled at that.  Really, he was an awfully nice-looking youth!  She had no idea that these longshore fishermen would be so gentlemanly and so good looking.

“Oh, you can’t miss it.  Take the first left-hand street, and keep on it.  Cap’n Abe’s store is the only one beyond the Mariner’s Chapel.”

“Thank you,” she said again and mounted the broad steps of the Inn.  The young fellow hesitated as though he were inclined to enter too.  But when Louise reached the piazza and glanced quickly down at him, he was moving on.

The cool interior of a broad hall with a stairway mounting out of it and a screened dining-room at one side, welcomed the girl.  A bustling young woman in checked gingham, which fitted her as though it were a mold for her rather plump figure, met the visitor.

“How-do!” she said briskly.  “Goin’ to stop?”

“Only for dinner,” Louise said, smiling—­and when she smiled her gray eyes made friends.

“Almost over.  But I’ll run an’ tell the cook to dish you up something hot.  Come right this way an’ wash.  I’ll fix you a table where it’s cool.  This is ’bout the first hot day we’ve had.”

She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away.  Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders having departed.