E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, David E. Brown,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/mermaidoverton00overiala |
MERMAID
“‘Out of the ocean you came,’ he said.... ‘Mermaid!The name is poetry and the story is romance’”
MERMAID
BY
GRANT M. OVERTON
Frontispiece by Henry A. Botkin
Garden CityNew York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
FOR
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
MERMAID
I
“NO ONE,” snapped Keturah Smiley, “can playProvidence to a married couple.”
“Some women can play Lucifer,” retorted herbrother. His hoarse but not unmusical voice shookwith anger.
“I had nothing to do with your wife’s running away,”Keturah Smiley answered. “What is this child youhave adopted?”
“I have adopted no child,” said Cap’n John Smileywith coldness. “A child was saved from the wreck ofthe Mermaid and the men at the station have adoptedher. The fancy struck them and—I certainly had noobjection. It’s—she’s—a girl, a little girl of about six.We don’t know her name. The men are calling herMermaid after the ship.”
Keturah Smiley sniffed. She wrapped the man’scoat she wore more closely about her, and made as if toreturn to her gardening.
Her brother eyed her with a wrathful blue eye. He[4]never saw her that they did not quarrel. He wasaware that, deep down, she loved him; he was awarethat it was this jealous love of Keturah’s which hadcaused her to nag the young girl he had married someseven years earlier. Mary Rogers, in Keturah’s eyes,was a silly, thoughtless, flighty person quite unfitted tofill the rôle of John Smiley’s wife and the mother ofJohn Smiley’s children