"Oh, sugar!" he said. "If I scorch ’em a mite helping that leetle gal and Ralph Endicott out o’ their muss, what’s the odds, Heppy? You know, we’re put here to help each other." "That is what most folks say that have an itch for minding other people’s business. Now, you have a care what you do, Tobias Bassett." CHAPTER IX THE DROP OF WORMWOOD When Lorna Nicholet first appeared at the Twin Rocks Light after arriving at her summer home, she gave no evidence of needing the lightkeeper’s—or any other person’s—good offices. She was her usual brisk, contented and fun-loving self. Conway Degger chanced to be present when Lorna came to the Light. Miss Ida had not seen the young man when she had called on Tobias and Heppy. "What a surprise, Mr. Degger!" the girl said, giving him a warmly welcoming hand. "I had no idea you were in this locality." "I am a waif from the sea, Miss Nicholet," he told her. "You ask the skipper, here, about it. I can never thank him enough. And Miss Heppy, too, who has so kindly taken me in and ministered to my well-being." "He says it pretty, don’t he now?" whispered Miss Heppy to Tobias. "Pretty is as pretty does," muttered the lightkeeper. "Somehow them fanciful speeches of his’n don’t bait much trawl with me." But Miss Heppy considered Conny Degger quite worthy of approval. Lorna found him interesting, too. Perhaps the very fact that her Aunt Ida had opposed her acquaintance with the young man caused Lorna to be the more contrary. And, really, Degger betrayed some rather attractive traits. During the next few days the girl and the boarder at Twin Rocks Light became close companions. They went fishing together in Tobias’s dory. They tramped the beach as far as the Lower Trillion life-saving station, Degger’s sprained foot being quite well again. And the young man appeared regularly on the Clay Head bathing beach at the morning bathing hour. Among the few families already at the resort, who made up a little social world of their own, it soon became a topic of conversation—this companionship of Lorna Nicholet and Conny Degger. Particularly was it commented upon, because for so many summers the girl and Ralph Endicott had been such close chums. Although the Endicotts had already arrived at the Clay Head, Ralph did not at once put in an appearance. This fact perhaps threw Lorna the more into Conny Degger’s company. Tongues began to wag. "I should say," squeaked Amos Pickering, who was a very busy man these days because of the influx of summer visitors, "that Lorny Nicholet has got another feller. That long-laiged Endicott boy’s always been tagging her other summers. Now this here boarder you got, Tobias, is stickin’ to her like a barnacle. What d’ye think it’ll amount to?"