Storm Tide by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page B

today, keeping house for her bachelor son Philip, in Pruitt’s Harbor, living close to her eldest son Charles and the robust, strong-willed brood that swirled around their grandmother like a whirlpool. They could never tarnish her shining peace, but sometimes they caught and carried a little of it away with them.
    Time to stop dreaming. Ellen and Nils would be ready for fish and potatoes and pork scraps, and she’d fixed enough so they could have fish hash for breakfast Sunday morning. . . .
    Ellen liked school, she liked Mrs. Robey and Whit, she was learning how to sew for Phoebe, and none of the big children in the school teased her or pulled her pigtails; if they did, Joey would fix them, she assured her mother. Meanwhile Joey spent every possible hour in Cap’n Merrill’s boatshop, and talked Vinnie and Caleb deaf every weekend. He was quite definite that he was going to be a boat builder.
    So everything was going all right, at least for the present. She began to set the table.
    Ellen came in first. Her plaid raincoat flying open, her scarlet hood slipping back on her smooth fair head, blue eyes aglisten and cheeks almost as scarlet as her hood, she burst in and ran across the kitchen to Joanna.
    â€œHi, Mother!” Her laughter pealed out. She hugged Joanna tightly and Joanna hugged her back, at the same time wondering at her daughter’s exuberance. Usually she came in so quietly, with all her happiness contained in her gravely delighted smile.
    â€œDid you have a rough trip, darling?”
    Ellen was pulling off her hood. Her pigtails fairly bounced. “Yes, and I stayed out all the way, and was it fun!” Off came the raincoat. Ellen seemed possessed of an excitement bigger than her body, it burst out of her in little chuckles, in the blue blaze of her eyes, in her dancing feet and flying fingers. “Mother, I brought you a surprise.”
    â€œYou’re the surprise girl, aren’t you? Always something new. Shall I guess?”
    â€œYou can’t ever guess!” said Ellen triumphantly. Her merry brown oxfords carried her toward the entry door. “And anyway, I can’t wait for you to guess, because it’d take you ’bout all day, and then you wouldn’t hit it! . . . Close your eyes.”
    Obediently Joanna set down the plates she was carrying, shut her eyes, and stood quite still in the middle of the kitchen. She heard Ellen’s breathless chuckles, and the opening of the entry door; a faint creaking of the board that always creaked, and then a presence near her; the mingled fragrances of soft leather and tobacco smoke and the cold November air. An unbearable excitement possessed her; it was all she could do to wait for Ellen’s ecstatic shriek. “ Now you can look!”
    Joanna looked, and saw her brother Stevie standing before her, smiling. It had been only a little while since he had kissed her at her wedding; yet the sight of his thin brown face and warm black eyes smiling from behind the thick lashes, in the kitchen of the house where he had grown up, was enough to send a rush of tears into her eyes.
    She caught him by his broad Bennett shoulders and hugged him hard, and he hugged her back. “Gosh, Jo, how are you?” he said in the identical way he had always said it.
    â€œStevie, I’m fine. . . . You look fine, too, only thin. . . .” She shook him a little, tenderly. “I don’t want to ask you how long you’re staying, but I want to know how long I can count on.”
    â€œWell—” Stevie’s mouth tucked up at the corner in the funny mischievous way it had. “You may get damn’ sick of me before I leave, Jo. You see, Mark and I don’t go line-trawlin’ any more.”
    â€œStevie, are you going to stay?” She sobered quickly. “What’s Mark doing? You two haven’t had a fight, have you?”
    â€œMark’s here,” said Stevie. He nodded toward the