Well, I was lolling there one night, as I say, watching the Boston boat go by, not thinking of anything special, when I heard the door on the other side of the tower open and footsteps coming around to me.

By and by I nodded toward the boat and passed the remark that she was fetching in uncommon close to-night.  No answer.  I made nothing of that, for oftentimes Fedderson wouldn’t answer, and after I’d watched the lights crawling on through the dark a spell, just to make conversation I said I guessed there’d be a bit of weather before long.

“I’ve noticed,” said I, “when there’s weather coming on, and the wind in the northeast, you can hear the orchestra playing aboard of her just over there.  I make it out now.  Do you?”

“Yes.  Oh—­yes—! I hear it all right!”

You can imagine I started.  It wasn’t him, but her.  And there was something in the way she said that speech, sir—­something—­well—­unnatural.  Like a hungry animal snapping at a person’s hand.

I turned and looked at her sidewise.  She was standing by the railing, leaning a little outward, the top of her from the waist picked out bright by the lens behind her.  I didn’t know what in the world to say, and yet I had a feeling I ought not to sit there mum.

“I wonder,” said I, “what that captain’s thinking of, fetching in so handy to-night.  It’s no way.  I tell you, if ’twasn’t for this light, she’d go to work and pile up on the ledge some thick night——­”

She turned at that and stared straight into the lens.  I didn’t like the look of her face.  Somehow, with its edges cut hard all around and its two eyes closed down to slits, like a cat’s, it made a kind of mask.

“And then,” I went on, uneasy enough—­“and then where’d all their music be of a sudden, and their goings-on and their singing——­”

“And dancing!” She clipped me off so quick it took my breath.

“D-d-dancing?” said I.

“That’s dance-music,” said she.  She was looking at the boat again.

“How do you know?” I felt I had to keep on talking.

Well, sir—­she laughed.  I looked at her.  She had on a shawl of some stuff or other that shined in the light; she had it pulled tight around her with her two hands in front at her breast, and I saw her shoulders swaying in tune.

“How do I know?” she cried.  Then she laughed again, the same kind of a laugh.  It was queer, sir, to see her, and to hear her.  She turned, as quick as that, and leaned toward me.  “Don’t you know how to dance, Ray?” said she.

“N-no,” I managed, and I was going to say “Aunt Anna,” but the thing choked in my throat.

I tell you she was looking square at me all the time with her two eyes and moving with the music as if she didn’t know it.  By heavens, sir, it came over me of a sudden that she wasn’t so bad-looking, after all.  I guess I must have sounded like a fool.