In any case he determined not to see the ship of Ralph and Lorna’s happiness cast on the rocks if he could help it. He felt that it might be within his power to avert such disaster. The strategic yeast of the true matchmaker began to stir within him. "Miss Ida," as everybody called Lorna’s assertive aunt, could not be long in any place without making her presence felt. Her original and independent character never failed to make its impress upon all domestic, as well as other, affairs. The Nicholet ménage was run like clockwork. Miss Ida was the clock. Everything at the big house on Clay Head was soon working smoothly, and Miss Ida could look about. She was a tall, free-striding, graceful woman without a gray thread in her abundant dark hair. She piled that hair low at the back of her head, and her neck and throat were like milk, and flawless. When she came across the barrens under her rose-tinted parasol to see Miss Heppy at the Light, her plain morning dress was arranged as carefully as a ball gown would be on another woman. In addition, her pleasant eyes and round, firm chin, together with her Junoesque figure, made her appearance most attractive. "Well, Heppy, how do you do?" she asked, her voice mellow and full. "How has the winter gone with you?" "’Bout the same as usual, Miss Ida," the lightkeeper’s sister replied. "You _be_ a pretty sight. None o’ the young ones can put anything over you, Miss Ida. You ain’t got a wrinkle or a fleck of gray in your head." Miss Ida laughed. "I’m forty-two. I’m frank to admit it. Why shouldn’t a woman be well preserved and in good health at my age if she has never made herself a slave to some man?" "For love’s sake! As for _that_, I ain’t never been married. But look at my wrinkles!" "Those are creases, not wrinkles, in your case, Heppy," laughed the visitor. "You are getting too fat. And you have been practically a slave for Tobias." "Sure she has," agreed the lightkeeper grinning. "I’ve been thinking of putting a nose-ring on her. She’s abused, all right." "You hush, Tobias! I ain’t slaved for nobody _but_ him, Miss Ida," declared Hephzibah warmly. "While you, Miss Ida, have shouldered the responsibility for your brother and all his family. If you’d married," added the longshore woman wisely, "like enough you wouldn’t have had nowhere near so big a family to care for." "I wonder?" laughed the other woman. Yet her expressive countenance became immediately serious. "My family is pretty well grown now, Heppy. I am sure even Lorna is old enough to make a nest for herself. She has been out two years." "Out o’ what?" Tobias asked, taking the pipe from his mouth and staring. "Looks to me as though she was well supplied with most everything a young gal ought to have, an’ wasn’t out o’ nothing." "I mean she has been in society two years."