ON THE morning of the last day of October, several years after it was decided that Mermaid should live with Keturah Smiley in Blue Port, a thin, pleasant-faced boy stopped in front of Keturah Smiley’s house and whistled. Thereupon a girl of eleven slipped out of the second front door of the house, the front door that faced the street from a jog on the south side of the building, and ran out to meet him. She was as tall as the boy, and he was thirteen; she had long and slightly curling hair of so coppery a red as almost to match the polished mahogany in Keturah Smiley’s tight-shut front parlour. She had a very white skin, accentuated by three freckles of varying size on and about her straight little nose. The firm and rounded chin was without a dimple, but two dimples showed in her cheeks as she smiled, and she was smiling now; and her blue eyes were of that brilliant and flashing blue that is to be seen, as seamen say, “off soundings.” People who had occasion to say much to Mary Smiley, whom everyone in Blue Port called Mermaid, were frequently deceived by her eyes. The blue of[59] them was so light that it seemed shallow, nothing more than the reflection of the day’s sunshine or the quicksilvering on two round little mirrors reflecting the merry heart within her. Only a mariner, after all, could be expected to guess that the very brightness and blueness was a sign of unfathomable depths.

“Good morning, Richard Hand, Jr.,” said the girl.

“Howdy, Mermaid,” retorted the boy.

They looked at each other a moment and smiled. They had become chums at school on the day they discovered an uncle in common. But Hosea Hand of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station, known as Ho Ha, was Dick Hand’s real uncle, the brother of his father, whereas he was only Mermaid’s uncle by adoption.

“To-night’s the night,” said the boy, amicably offering a jawbreaker. Mermaid accepted the candy and said, with her mouth full, “I’ve unfastened most of ’em, so if the wind doesn’t blow and make them bang, they’ll be all ready for you. All you’ll have to do is unhinge them. Do you suppose you can do that?”

“Sure,” said Dick. “They’re just ordinary shutters. Maybe a little rusted.”

“I oiled some of them while she was up street yesterday,” the girl reassured him.

They were conspiring, as a Hallowe’en prank, to detach as many shutters as possible from Keturah Smiley’s tightly shuttered house; and particularly, the shutters were to be got off the windows of the sacred, sealed front[60] parlour. In the three years or more that Mermaid had been living with Cap’n Smiley’s sister these shutters had been unfastened but twice a year: for a few hours in spring and a few hours in fall at the time of Keturah Smiley’s semi-annual housecleaning. For six months, from spring to fall, and again for six months, from fall to spring, the front parlour and most of the other rooms of the house lay in darkness. It seemed impossible that anything, even dust, could enter there, but dust there always was when cleaning time came. At which Mermaid used to wonder greatly, and Keturah Smiley to rage.

“Where do you suppose it comes from?” the girl would ask Miss Smiley.

“I don’t know where it comes from, but I know where it’s going to,” Keturah replied, with such a savage accent as to make her remark almost profane.

“Hell?” inquired Mermaid.

Miss Smiley straightened up and looked at her sternly.

“I was only asking a question,” explained Mermaid. “I wouldn’t think of saying ‘hell’ except to ask a question. But any one who says ‘hell’ is asking a big question, isn’t he, Miss Smiley?”

The funny child, as some folks in Blue Port called her, was not expressing her doubt for the first time. She had first shocked a Sunday School teacher with it. The Sunday School teacher had spoken to Keturah[61] Smiley but had regretted it immediately, for Keturah had said:

“Well, what’s the matter? Can’t you convince her there’s a hell? That’s your job! Why put it on me?”

So now when Mermaid put the general inquiry as to whether any one saying “hell” were not asking a big question, Keturah merely gazed at her darkly and replied:

“Most likely he’s answering one about himself.”

This tickled Mermaid. She renewed an old controversy concerning the front parlour.

“What’s the use of singing, as we do at Sunday School, ‘Let a Little Sunshine In,’ if the shutters are always fastened?” she demanded. “How can you expect me to stand up and sing, ‘There’s Sunshine in My Heart To-day,’ Miss Smiley, when there’s not even sunshine in the house?”

Keturah snorted. “My heart is not as big as my house,” she answered. “Sunshine in some people’s hearts, like sunshine in some people’s houses, would show up a good deal that would better be hidden.”

Mermaid’s blue eyes shone, even in the semi-darkness. From the very first she had liked living with her Dad’s sister, despite that sister’s dark moods and bleak rages, because Keturah Smiley had a gift for saying sharp, true things, and saying them so you remembered them. She had not been unkind to the girl and had even shown a certain grudging liking for[62] her as Mermaid, whether from some natural gift or from crossing blades in conve............