“The forecast for to-day,” says he, looking at the water again, “is cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on.  Wind sou’east, changing to south and sou’west.”

“Right you are!” says Peter, joyful.  “We start for Setuckit, then.  And here’s where the South Shore Weather Bureau hands another swift jolt to your Uncle Sam.”

So, after breakfast, the catboats loaded up, the girls giggling and screaming, and the men boarders dressed in what they hoped was sea-togs.  They sailed away ’round the lighthouse and headed up the shore, and the wind was sou’east sure and sartin, but the “clearing” part wasn’t in sight yet.

Beriah didn’t watch ’em go.  He stayed in the shanty.  But by and by, when Eben drove the buggy out of the barn and Emma come skipping down the piazza steps, I see him peeking out of the little winder.

The Kelly critter had all sail sot and colors flying.  Her dress was some sort of mosquito netting with wall-paper posies on it, and there was more ribbons flapping than there is reef-p’ints on a mainsail.  And her hat!  Great guns!  It looked like one of them pictures you see in a flower-seed catalogue.

“Oh!” she squeals, when she sees the buggy.  “Oh!  Mr. Cobb.  Ain’t you afraid to go in that open carriage?  It looks to me like rain.”

But Eben waved his flipper, scornful.  “My forecast this morning,” says he, “is cloudy now, but clearing by and by.  You trust to me, Mis’ Kelly.  Weather’s my business.”

“Of course I trust you, Mr. Cobb,” she says, “Of course I trust you, but I should hate to spile my gown, that’s all.”

They drove out of the yard, fine as fiddlers, and I watched ’em go.  When I turned around, there was Beriah watching ’em too, and he was smiling for the first time that morning.  But it was one of them kind of smiles that makes you wish he’d cry.

At ha’f-past ten it begun to sprinkle; at eleven ’twas raining hard; at noon ’twas a pouring, roaring, sou’easter, and looked good for the next twelve hours at least.

“Good Lord!  Beriah,” says Cap’n Jonadab, running into the Weather Bureau, “you’ve missed stays this time, for sure.  Has your prophecy-works got indigestion?” he says.

But Beriah wasn’t there.  The shanty was closed, and we found out afterwards that he spent that whole day in the store down at the Port.

By two o’clock ’twas so bad that I put on my ileskins and went over to Wellmouth and telephoned to the Setuckit Beach life-saving station to find out if the clambakers had got there right side up.  They’d got there; fact is, they was in the station then, and the language Peter hove through that telephone was enough to melt the wires.  ’Twas all in the shape of compliments to the prophet, and I heard Central tell him she’d report it to the head office.  Brown said ’twas blowing so they’d have to come back by the inside channel, and that meant landing ’way up Harniss way, and hiring teams to come to the Port with from there.