The Green Dolphin
dropped the plates he was carrying.
Framed in garlands of climbing roses that arched the entrance and with
gown snowy against the blue of the distant sea, the girl presented a
fair and cheering picture.
Lemmy sprang to let her in.
“I haven’t come to interrupt you,” she explained with a smile. “I’ve
come to help.”
“To--to--what?” stammered Asaph.
“To help. Ever since I was here the other day I’ve been wondering how
you were getting along, and today, on hearing in roundabout fashion
that Mrs. Holmes had not yet returned, I decided to run in and offer
my services. Not that you need me. Everyone I meet is singing the
praises of the tea-house. There’s an old gentleman at our hotel who
hasn’t done talking yet of the wonderful lobster he had here last week.
Nevertheless I know it must all mean lots of work, especially when
you’re not accustomed to such duties. So I’ve come to beg a job. I
should have done so before if the Hollingsworths had not kept Mother
and me on the jump every minute until they went away.”
“They’ve gone, have they?” interposed Lemmy Gill. “I’m sorry to hear
that for I liked ’em. I kinder thought from what they said they might
turn up here again.”
“They wanted to. But the days were so full--”
“I know, I know,” nodded the little man. “Sort of a pity, though, this
sightin’ folks you hanker to see more of an’ havin’ ’em swallered up
as if by a fog. Prob’ly we’ll never glimpse ’em again this side of the
grave.”
“Oh, yes, you will. They haven’t all gone,” explained the girl, turning
pink as the rose tucked in her dress. “The young doctor is still here.
He had to remain behind on some business or other.”
A significant “Oh!” escaped Lemuel.
“You will let me help you, won’t you?” pleaded Peggy, hurriedly
changing the subject. “There must be things an extra pair of hands can
do.”
“It’s mighty kind of you to offer,” replied Asaph.
“Offer? But I mean to do it. I came on purpose. See, here is my apron
in testimony,” and she held up a wee muslin affair from which dangled
pertly starched strings.
“But the very notion--” Asaph began.
“Why not? I’m bored to death sitting round that hotel piazza with
nothing to do. It will be quite a lark.”
Resolutely she laid aside her hat and shaking out her bobbed curls she
donned her wisp of an apron.
“I’ll set the tables,” announced she, taking the plates from Asaph’s
hand. “What are you going to have today?”
“That’s what we were just cogitatin’ about,” Lemuel Gill responded.
“We’re kinder on the rocks this afternoon. We’d intended diggin’ clams;
but the tide was wrong. For an hour ’most I’ve been rackin’ my brain
for another inspiration.”
“What is there in the house?” interrogated Peggy, with businesslike
directness.
“Not much of anythin’, I’m afraid. You can come into the pantry an’
take a look around,” was Asaph’s spiritless answer. “There’s more sour
milk than anythin’ else. Seems to be seas of it. I’ve been meanin’
to stop that milkman leavin’ so much but ain’t got round to it.” He
motioned gloomily toward the array of pans and bowls scattered about
the shelves.
“Here’s cheese,” exclaimed Peggy.
“Yes, there’s plenty of that. Sour milk an’ cheese--nothin’ very
appetizin’ in that layout,” commented the disheartened chef. “I can’t
make ’em into nothin’ an’ neither can Lemmy.”
“But I can,” Peggy cried with enthusiasm. “I can make delicious
sour milk gingerbread.” Her eye traversed the cupboard. “We’ll have
sandwiches, iced tea, hot gingerbread and cheese--an excellent menu for
a warm day. Now where is the flour?”
Already her sleeves were rolled up and she was lifting down a huge
earthen bowl.
“You ain’t actually goin’ to cook?” gasped Asaph.
“Yes, I am. Why not? But I must have a good fire. Hadn’t we better put
on a little more wood?”
In a moment she had enlarged the Dolphin staff from two to three
members, and set the men to work with such spirited leadership that
their waning courage revived, and long before the fumes of the bronzing
gingerbread scented the cottage they were once more in high feather and
leaping to do her bidding.
“Was she to suggest puttin’ Pyrox in the tea I believe I’d do it,”
whispered Lemuel Gill in an aside to his confederate. “Ain’t she the
clear-headed little pilot, though? Sure of the channel as if she’d
towed a tea-room along all her days.”
She certainly was. Without hesitation she whisked the revered green
china on to the tables, arranging it daintily with some paper doilies
produced from goodness only knew where; she placed the knives, forks,
and spoons so they lay amicably side by side; then she hunted out
several small glass vases Althea had purchased and stored away.
“Could you trust me to cut a few flowers?” she asked. “I’ll be very
careful and take them where they won’t be missed.”
“You can help yourself to whatever you like,” assented Asaph. “Here’s
my scissors. Snip off anythin’ you take a fancy to.”
Oh, he had indeed been reduced to a state of utter subjection when he
gave such wholesale permission as that!
Peggy did not, however, take advantage of the freedom granted her.
Within a short space of time she returned from the garden bringing only
a few sprays of roses and mignonette, which she put in the centre of
each table. This touch of artistry, however, immediately transformed
the place.
“We might ’a’ done that, Lemmy, if we’d had the brains,” said Asaph.
“Looks pretty, don’t it? I wish Althea could see it.”
With fervor Lemmy nodded. He wished so with all his heart.
As they trooped after Peggy into the kitchen Lemuel stopped to peep out
of the window and presently inquired:
“Ain’t that Doctor Hollingsworth comin’ in the gate?”
Blushing furiously the girl bent over the stove.
“Mercy!” she ejaculated. “What do you suppose he wants here?” Then
taking refuge in the shadow of the oven door she called:
“This is no place for you, Eric. We’re busy.”
“I thought maybe--”
“You’d get more chowder and fruit cake? Well, you won’t. We’re leading
the simple life today and you’ll get nothing but gingerbread.”
“But I like gingerbread,” the unabashed intruder announced.
“Oh, do you?” retorted Miss Peggy, with a toss of her rippling locks.
Eric ventured farther into the kitchen.
“What have you done, Mr. Holmes--sold out your business?” he asked.
“He’s had it took away from him,” chuckled Lemuel Gill.
“I warn’t sorry to surrender it,” explained Asaph with a faint sigh.
“You see a dolphin’s all well enough so long as it keeps mild an’
docile; but when it turns into a whale an’ starts runnin’ away--line,
harpoon an’ all--it has you beat.”
“Fie, Mr. Holmes! You weren’t beaten,” smiled Peggy. “Instead, every
day in every way you were growing better and better.”
Eric Hollingsworth laughed, but Asaph, to whom Coué’s optimistic
philosophy was a sealed book, responded literally:
“If I have it’s chiefly due to Lemmy. The chowder was his, an’ the
lobsters, too.”
“Your clam fritters made a great hit Wednesday, I heard.”
“They didn’t go a-beggin’,” admitted the man modestly. “But we
couldn’t ’a’ remained on such heights as that forever. Our list of
accomplishments was gettin’ played out. Sooner or later there’d ’a’
been a drop to baked beans. Mebbe today, marm, if you hadn’t happened
in.”
With frank admiration he regarded the girl in the microscopic apron.
So did young Hollingsworth.
To judge from his eager glance he would have been quite content to
watch her indefinitely had she not cut short this agreeable pastime by
saying:
“Suppose, Eric, since you are here uninvited, a drone in a hive of
bees, you make yourself useful by hunting round outdoors for some mint.”
“Mint! Shades of Volstead! You’re not going to make a surreptitious
julep?”
“Nothing so good,” laughed Peggy. “Only a fourth cousin to one. I
simply wish to put some mint into the iced tea.”
“How are the mighty fallen!” groaned the doctor.
“Oh, there’s shoals of mint in the garden,” asserted Asaph. “I can get
you all you want. I don’t know, though, as I ever heard of puttin’ it
in tea.”
“After what happened Friday Asaph’s goin’ kinder slow on herbs,” put in
Lemmy Gill.
“An’ is it to be wondered at if I am?” returned his comrade
good-humoredly. “If you’d all but poisoned a man an’ two women you’d
move careful too.”
It was a merry afternoon, a day of friendly jest and nonsense. And when
it proved to be one of the most popular in the tea-shop’s history,
Asaph Holmes’s gratitude knew no bounds.
“My eye, Miss Davidson, you’ve set a pace for us now,” he beamed. “What
with your gingerbread, your mint, an’ your flowers you’ve given us a
pretty high mark to shoot at.”
“Your mint, and your flowers, Mr. Holmes,” corrected Peggy.
“Nonsense! I didn’t know enough to use ’em,” came humbly from the owner
of the grey cottage. “Most likely, too, there’s other blessin’s starin’
me in the face that I’m too stupid to see.”
“One of ’em is lookin’ you between the eyes right now,” said Lemmy
Gill, directing a gallant bow toward Peggy.
“Oh, I ain’t missin’ that one,” smiled Asaph. “I do hope you know,
marm, how grateful Lemmy an’ me are to you.”
“You needn’t be,” answered the girl. “I’ve had all kinds of fun. It’s
always been one of my ambitions to run a tea-room.”
“Queer how the notion gets women,” the man muttered.
“It does, though,” confessed Peggy. “There is fascination in the very
mention of cakes and tea. I shall be back again tomorrow. Oh, yes,
I shall. You cannot rid yourself so easily of me. Haven’t I been
satisfactory?” She dimpled in distracting fashion.
“You’re always satisfactory,” burst out Eric Hollingsworth, impulsively.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” retorted the girl with magnificent hauteur.
“I was addressing Mr. Holmes.”
“Satisfactory ain’t quite the word,” said Asaph slowly. “I met a line
would fit you like a cap in somethin’ I was readin’ lately. I wish I
could think how it went.”
“Somethin’ Daniel Webster wrote, I’ll bet a penny,” interrupted Lemuel
Gill in a proud undertone. “Asaph’s great on books, you know. Before we
launched away on this Dolphin he was always readin’. But he gets little
time for that sort of thing now.”
“I can read this winter,” returned his pal, a hint of wistfulness in
his tone.
“When the Dolphins cease from troublin’ an’ the weary are at rest,”
interpolated the irrepressible Captain.
But Asaph ignored the jest.
“’Tain’t hurt me to rest my eyes, I guess,” said he brightly. “Readin’
is taxin’ business. Besides, I’ve got my flowers. One rose will keep
you goin’ for quite a spell,” he added with a smile.
Apparently roses, combined with Peggy Davidson’s skill, Lemuel’s
constant assistance, and the daily visits of Doctor Hollingsworth
kept Asaph Holmes serene for an entire week. Then one afternoon, all
unheralded, in walked Althea. No, she did not walk in. That had been
her intention; but instead of carrying it out she halted at the gate of
her dwelling and stared incredulously about her.
As far as eye could reach there extended down the lane an array
of automobiles such as, in her limited experience, portended no
function but a funeral. They stood parked along the edge of the
bayberry-bordered meadow; they jostled each other for space beside
the vine-covered wall. She did not remember ever having seen so many
cars together at one time, and wondered what had brought them. Then
presently she observed they stretched away from her own door and a
great fear assailed her. Suppose, during her absence, something had
happened to Asaph, and through a prank of fate she had failed to
receive word of the tragedy? He would have a large funeral, for not
only was he one of the oldest residents of the village, but a deacon
of the church and a trustee of the library as well. The next moment,