They had supper, a plentiful meal if there was not much variety.  Prudence had made a “two-egg cake” and opened a jar of beach-plum preserves to follow the creamed fish and biscuits.

“I must learn to make biscuit as good as these,” said Ida May.

“I expect you are more used to riz bread.  City folks are.  But on the Cape we don’t have that much.  Our men folks want hot bread at every meal.  We pamper ’em,” said Prudence.

“I’m pampered ’most to death, that’s a fact,” grumbled Cap’n Ira.

Ida May briskly cleared the table and washed the dishes.  She would not allow Prudence even to wipe them.

“I’m sitting here like a lady, Ira,” said the little old woman.  “This child will work herself to death if we let her.”

“A willin’ horse always does get driv’ too fast,” commented Cap’n Ira.

“A new broom sweeps clean,” laughed the girl, rinsing out the dishcloths and hanging them on the line behind the stove.

They went outside in the gloaming and sat in a sheltered nook where they could watch the lights twinkling all along the coast to the southward, the revolving lantern at Lighthouse Point, the steady beacon on Eagle’s Head, and now and then the flash of the great one of Monomoy Point so far away.  It was peaceful, quiet, assuring, and, the girl thought, heavenly!  She thought for a moment of Sellers’ restaurant and the little room she had occupied on Hanover Street. This was contentment.

Old Pareta had brought her trunk and bag and carried them up to the big, well-furnished room she was to occupy.  By and by Prudence went up with her to see that she was made comfortable there, and to watch her unpack, for the old woman was not without curiosity regarding the “city fashions.”

One window of the room looked to the north.  Through this Ida May saw the steady beam of a lamp shining from a house down in what seemed to be a depression behind the Head.  She asked Prudence what that was.

“That must be a light at ‘Latham’s Folly,’ Tunis’ house, you know,” said the little old woman, likewise peering through the window.  “Shouldn’t be surprised if ’twas right in his room.  He sleeps this end of the house.  Yes, that’s what it is.”

“So Captain Latham lives just there?” the girl said softly.

“When he’s ashore.  He and his Aunt Lucretia.  They are the only Lathams left of their branch of the family.”

Afterward, when Ida May had come upstairs to go to bed, she looked to the northward again.  The light was still there.  She knelt by the open window in her nightgown and watched the light for a long time.  When it finally was extinguished she crept into bed.

She heard the nasal tones of the two old people below, for her door on the stairs was open.  She heard, too, the occasional cry of a night fowl and, in the distance, the barking of an uneasy watchdog.

But after all, and in spite of the many, many thoughts which shuttled to and fro in her mind, she did not lie awake for long.  It was a clear and sparkling night; there were no foghorns to disturb her dreams with their raucous warnings, and the surf along the beaches below the Head merely scuffed its way up and down the strand with a soothing “Hush!  Hush-sh!”