But as she left the wheel to him without speaking and went to sit down alone in the stern of the _Fenique_, he did not urge conversation upon her. They sailed into Clinkerport Bay, and so around to the cove beside the lighthouse, both about as cheerful as had been their wont when together during the past few weeks. Tobias came down to the shore to hail them. "I give it as my opinion," the lightkeeper said, "that you sandpipers air all lackin’ in good sense. ’Tis a mystery to me how you come to get raised to the age you be without getting drowned a dozen times over!" "I was born to be hung," Ralph told him. "The sea isn’t wet enough to drown me." "But you’ve no business riskin’ Lorny’s life in your tom-fool v’y’ges." Ralph did not even bother to deny the lightkeeper’s charge. He snubbed the motor-boat to the mooring buoy and then sculled Lorna ashore in the dory. She still wore his oilskins and was bare-footed, but carried her dress over her arm. "I’ll run up to the light to dress," she said. "In any case I must see Mr. Degger for a moment." [Illustration: "I’ll run up to the light to dress," she said.] "Your eyesight will have to be pretty average good, then," drawled Tobias. "Why?" she asked, hesitating. "He’s left." "Why, he was with us down at Lower Trillion!" "Ya-as. I know. He come back up here with Zeke in the automobile, changed his clothes, packed his sea chist, and went on with Zeke to Clinkerport. Heppy’s fair put out. She’d made a heap of fishballs for supper. Cal’late you an’ Ralph better stop an’ help us eat ’em, Lorny." "Thank you. As Mr. Degger has gone I will go home immediately," the girl said. "Good evening, Mr. Bassett." She did not even cast a scornful glance at Ralph. "Oh, sugar!" was Tobias’s comment. CHAPTER XIV A VARIETY OF HAPPENINGS Ralph remained at the lighthouse and did justice to the fishcakes. Miss Heppy was "all in a stew," as Tobias said, over the sudden departure of the boarder. "I’m fair troubled that he wasn’t satisfied with our table," the good woman said. "Fishballs and brown loaf and clam chowder and johnnycake and baked beans Saturday night and Sundays, is pretty tryin’, I do allow, to them as ain’t used to it. We never do have a piece of fresh meat." "Oh, sugar!" chuckled Tobias. "Don’t belittle your fodder, Heppy. You air a mighty good cook as fur as you go. If you had all kinds of fancy doo-dads you wouldn’t know how to cook ’em, you know you wouldn’t." "What do you s’pose cookbooks was made for, Tobias Bassett?" demanded Miss Heppy. "I cal’late they make good pipe-lights," rejoined her brother, suiting his action to his word as he stood at the mantel after supper and rolled himself a spill of a page of the culinary guide in question. "Come, Ralph, le’s go up and see if the light is burning bright. ’You in your small corner, an’ I in mine.’ That allus seemed a cheerful sort o’ hymn to me.