The men are gone to the quarry for two or three days, as Mr. Ludlow Thomas wishes to speak to the workers. What does one do with such a man? He gives me his confidence—indeed the very contents of his heart—in womanish fashion, rather than pocketing it without comment like most of his sex.

“What is this one named?” he asked me, pointing to the tiny white shell in his palm. I leaned down from my perch upon the ladder and brushed away the sand from the surface of the shell so I might see the markings.

“Nothing,” I replied, and wet my cloth again, preparing to climb up a rung farther.

“I do not believe you, Miss Grange.” He held his palm up so it drew even with my waist above him. “Look again.”

There was a particularly salt-encrusted spot I concentrated on, rubbing fiercely against the windowpane in tight circles, the motion warming my hands. I felt a tug upon my apron strings.

“Stop!” I could not help smiling down at him. He was ridiculous, insisting that he must learn all the names of the shells and crawlers before he returns to New York, where he means to deliver a lecture on the life unremarked among the rocks of Maine.

“Spat,” I said without looking at him.

“Spat? And what is that?”

“An oyster baby.”

He looked into his hand. “And why not call it merely oyster?”

“Is a child a man?” I asked him.

He shook his head mournfully, as though I played with him; and he a man of business, a man of consummate intelligence and self-worth. He drew out his handkerchief and made a great todo of wrapping the tiny white creature. “Well.” That was all he said before he turned and proceeded down the lawn. I turned back to the window, the autumn sun welcome upon my shoulders and the back of my neck. I’d the whole first-floor side windows still to do.

“You are magnificent, Miss Grange.” I jumped and nearly dropped my cloth. He spoke low and stood at my elbow, looking up at me quite earnestly.

I stepped down from the ladder and dried my hands upon the grass, entirely perplexed as to a suitable response.

“Because I know the names of shells?”

“Because there is such knowledge in you”—he tapped his chest—“in here.”

I looked past him to the apple tree in the meadow. “Oh, and how is it you have come to know that?”

“I have listened to you”—he stopped—“next your sister.”

“She is a mighty one.”

He did not answer for a moment, and I glanced at him beside me. He was studying me and smiled when he saw my eyes upon him. “She is pretty,” he admitted. I nodded in agreement. “But, may I say it?” he continued. “You are beautiful.”

I colored, suspecting a joke immediately.