“Well as I do the meeting-house.  There!  I wonder I didn’t know from the beginning, but I have been a trying all the way to settle it who you could be.  I’ve been up country some weeks, stopping with my mother, and she seemed so set to have me stay till strawberry-time, and would hardly let me come now.  You see she’s getting to be old; why, every time I’ve come away for fifteen years she’s said it was the last time I’d ever see her, but she’s a dreadful smart woman of her age.  ‘He’ wrote me some o’ Mrs. Lancaster’s folks were going to take the Brandon house this summer; and so you are the ones?  It’s a sightly old place; I used to go and see Miss Katharine.  She must have left a power of china-ware.  She set a great deal by the house, and she kept everything just as it used to be in her mother’s day.”

“Then you live in Deephaven too?” asked Kate.

“I’ve been here the better part of my life.  I was raised up among the hills in Vermont, and I shall always be a real up-country woman if I live here a hundred years.  The sea doesn’t come natural to me, it kind of worries me, though you won’t find a happier woman than I be, ’long shore.  When I was first married ‘he’ had a schooner and went to the banks, and once he was off on a whaling voyage, and I hope I may never come to so long a three years as those were again, though I was up to mother’s.  Before I was married he had been ’most everywhere.  When he came home that time from whaling, he found I’d taken it so to heart that he said he’d never go off again, and then he got the chance to keep Deephaven Light, and we’ve lived there seventeen years come January.  There isn’t great pay, but then nobody tries to get it away from us, and we’ve got so’s to be contented, if it is lonesome in winter.”

“Do you really live in the lighthouse?  I remember how I used to beg to be taken out there when I was a child, and how I used to watch for the light at night,” said Kate, enthusiastically.

So began a friendship which we both still treasure, for knowing Mrs. Kew was one of the pleasantest things which happened to us in that delightful summer, and she used to do so much for our pleasure, and was so good to us.  When we went out to the lighthouse for the last time to say good by, we were very sorry girls indeed.  We had no idea until then how much she cared for us, and her affection touched us very much.  She told us that she loved us as if we belonged to her, and begged us not to forget her,—­as if we ever could!—­and to remember that there was always a home and a warm heart for us if she were alive.  Kate and I have often agreed that few of our acquaintances are half so entertaining.  Her comparisons were most striking and amusing, and her comments upon the books she read—­for she was a great reader—­were very shrewd and clever, and always to the point.  She was never out of temper, even when the barrels of oil were being rolled across her kitchen floor.  And she was such a wise woman!  This stage-ride, which we expected to find tiresome, we enjoyed very much, and we were glad to think, when the coach stopped, and “he” came to meet her with great satisfaction, that we had one friend in Deephaven at all events.