As Julia entered her father's house, quite fresh and dry after the tumults of the storm, each of the group gathered about the fireside was too insistently preoccupied at the moment to notice the discrepancy between her spotless attire and the aspects of the weather, except indeed Luther. The details of their attire she marked at once, and dimpled at the sight. These rain-lashed victims of the processioning had hustled themselves into their cast-off gear; and albeit the fashions of the day were not exigent in the Cove, very forlorn appeared these ancient garments, having long ago seen the best of their never very good days. Cap'n Lucy's brown coat was like a russet old crinkled leaf, as it clung, out of shape and ruffled by unskillful folding, about him; Luther wore one of his own of former years, far too small now for his burly shoulders that threatened to burst out of it at every seam, and his long arms that protruded their blue shirt-sleeves only half covered from the elbow. He met her glance with a resentful glare, as if he could imagine now no cause for mirth, which was untimely in its best estate. His Sunday coat graced the form of Jasper Larrabee, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who albeit not of the processioning party, had been caught in the rain in coming hither. Although as tall as Luther, he was much more slender, and he seemed to have shrunk, somehow, in the amplitude of his host's big blue coat. He gave Julia a formal greeting, and was apparently much perturbed by the untoward state of mind in which he found Cap'n Lucy. And indeed Cap'n Lucy's face seemed to have adopted sundry wrinkles from his coat, so old, so awry, so crinkled, so suggestive of better days, had it suddenly become. Julia was reminded all at once of the business interests at stake. "How did the percessionin' turn out, dad?" she inquired, as she stood with her hand on the back of a chair, and looked across the fire at him. If any eyes might watch Fortune's wheel undismayed, whether it swing high or low, one might deem them these surely, with perpetual summer blooming there, as if there were no frosts, no winter's chill, no waning of time or love or life. What cared she for land or its lack? The fore-legs of Cap'n Lucy's chair came to the floor with an irascible thump. He turned and surveyed the room; then, looking at her, "Air yer eyesight good?" he demanded. "Toler'ble," she admitted. "D'ye see that thar contraption?" he continued, leaning forward, and pointing with great _empressement_ at a spinning-wheel in the corner. "I see it," she said, meeting his keen return glance. "D'ye know what it's made fur?" he inquired, dropping his voice, and with an air of being about to impart valuable information. "Fur spinning" she answered wonderingly. "Oh, ye know, do ye? Then--mind it."