Free The Dawning of the Day by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page A

wonder why I haul from a peapod instead of a power-boat.” He sounded stiff. She glanced around at him and surprised a rush of red in his face.
    â€œNo, I wasn’t wondering. I don’t know enough about it to wonder. Perley Fraser has a peapod, too, hasn’t he?”
    â€œThat fumble-foot!” Charles jerked his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. “He’ll always be a pod fisherman, if he don’t fall over his own fat—if he don’t get in his own way and drown himself one of these days.” He raked his thumbnail over the match head and lit his cigarette. His voice went stiff again. “I had me a good boat. Twenty-four feet. She wasn’t much size to her, as they go around here, but she was all boat.”
    â€œDid you lose her in a storm?” Philippa asked.
    â€œNo. You can see her any time in Brigport Harbor. I lost her on account of gambling.”
    â€œOh,” she said without inflection, wondering if he had expected her to be shocked. He shrugged, and pushed out his lower lip.
    â€œFamily raised pure hell about it. They had to get together and chew just so much. But I didn’t care. Just kept on playing poker. Lost my shotgun up at the choppers’, and the Squire—that’s what I call Cap’n Charles, my old man, when I want to gowel him—he thought I’d lose my peapod next and then I’d go out on my ear because he paid for it.” He laughed softly. “They figgered when Bob Pierce came and took my boat that’d cure me of gambling. It didn’t. So they think I’m the numbest thing ever feet hung on and was called a man.”
    He looked at her with a wide dark stare that was incredibly young, like a colt’s. “I guess they’ll be relieved when they find out I’m cured now.”
    â€œWhen did that happen?”
    â€œLast week.” He kept his eyes on hers, but the color was in his face again, and she had to struggle to hide her sudden dismay. “One day last week. I guess I was gambling because I didn’t have anything else to think about. I always wondered how my uncle Owen could stop raising hell so quick after he met Laurie.”
    â€œI’m glad you’ve stopped,” she said pleasantly. “Perhaps you’ll get your boat back now.” She stood up, hoping it seemed casual. He got up too.
    â€œI’ll have her back. Man can’t do much from a peapod. I’ve been playing at lobstering, that’s all. No sense of responsibility, the Squire says.” They walked along the path toward the next cove. “Most people call me the black sheep of the family,” he went on, “ever since Owen stopped drinking and got married.”
    â€œYou don’t look terribly black to me,” said Philippa. “I’m sure they don’t think too badly of you. I know when I was nineteen or so I thought everybody disapproved of me. It’s something we all go through.”
    â€œI’m twenty-one,” he said tensely. “And they think I’m a black sinner. Maybe they’re right. I broke into a store once and almost went to jail. And I’ve been out with a married woman.” He strode off ahead of her without looking back. She walked slowly behind him, amused, touched, and appalled all at once. It had come to her suddenly that he had not been bragging to show her that he was a man, but confessing.
    This was what her sister and her brother-in-law had warned her against, laughing across the dinner table. . . . You’ll be courted, Phil. It’s more than recreation, it’s one of the purest traditions. You should come out of this experience either a broken woman or an accomplished diplomat .
    Perhaps it could be a joke, if she were callous enough. But at the moment she was very unhappy about it.
    Charles was waiting for her, lying back against the trunk of a small twisted spruce and gazing up through its sparse boughs at the sky. He