This running fire of greetings was made with a pause before each inmate of the room—­a hearty hand-shake for the bluff captain, the pressing of Mrs. Dellenbaugh’s limp fingers, a low bow to Lucy, and a pat on Martha’s plump shoulder.

Jane came last, as she always did.  She had risen to greet him and was now unwinding the white silk handkerchief wrapped about his throat and helping him off with his fur tippet and gloves.

“Thank you, Jane.  No, let me take it; it’s rather wet,” he added as he started to lay the heavy overcoat over a chair.  “Wait a minute.  I’ve some violets for you if they are not crushed in my pocket.  They came last night,” and he handed her a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper.  This done, he took his customary place on the rug with his back to the blazing logs and began unbuttoning his trim frock-coat, bringing to view a double-breasted, cream-white waistcoat—­he still dressed as a man of thirty, and always in the fashion—­as well as a fluffy scarf which Jane had made for him with her own fingers.

“And what have I interrupted?” he asked, looking over the room.  “One of your sea yarns, captain?” —­here he reached over and patted the child’s head, who had crept back to the captain’s arms—­ “or some of my lady’s news from Paris?  You tell me, Jane,” he added, with a smile, opening his thin, white, almost transparent fingers and holding them behind his back to the fire, a favorite attitude.

“Ask the captain, John.”  She had regained her seat and was reaching out for her work-basket, the violets now pinned in her bosom—­her eyes had long since thanked him.

“No, do you tell me,” he insisted, moving aside the table with her sewing materials and placing it nearer her chair.

“Well, but it’s the captain who should speak,” Jane replied, laughing, as she looked up into his face, her eyes filled with his presence.  “He has startled us all with the most wonderful proposition.  The Government is going to build a life-saving station at Barnegat beach, and they have offered him the position of keeper, and he says he will take it if I will let Archie go with him as one of his crew.”

Doctor John’s face instantly assumed a graver look.  These forked roads confronting the career of a young life were important and not to be lightly dismissed.

“Well, what did you tell him?” he asked, looking down at Jane in the effort to read her thoughts.

“We are waiting for you to decide, John.”  The tone was the same she would have used had the doctor been her own husband and the boy their child.

Doctor John communed with himself for an instant.  “Well, let us take a vote,” he replied with an air as if each and every one in the room was interested in the decision.  “We’ll begin with Mistress Martha, and then Mrs. Dellenbaugh, and then you, Jane, and last our lady from over the sea.  The captain has already sold his vote to his affections, and so must be counted out.”