`` It never was so nice before . Mistress Selwyn had your taste and she did wonders ; but folks in those days did n't have the pretty little curtains and pictures and nicknacks you have . As for Elizabeth , she lived in the past . You 've kinder brought the future into it , so to speak . I 'd be real happy even if we could n't talk at all , when I come here -- jest to sit and look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be enough of a treat . It 's beautiful -- beautiful . '' Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty . Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep , subtle , inner joy that irradiated his life . He was quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward comeliness and lamented it . `` Folks say I 'm good , '' he remarked whimsically upon one occasion , `` but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks . But there , I reckon He knew what He was about , as a good Captain should . Some of us have to be homely , or the purty ones -- like Mistress Blythe here -- would n't show up so well . '' One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the Four Winds light . The day had begun sombrely in gray cloud and mist , but it had ended in a pomp of scarlet and gold . Over the western hills beyond the harbor were amber deeps and crystalline shallows , with the fire of sunset below . The north was a mackerel sky of little , fiery golden clouds . The red light flamed on the white sails of a vessel gliding down the channel , bound to a southern port in a land of palms . Beyond her , it smote upon and incarnadined the shining , white , grassless faces of the sand dunes . To the right , it fell on the old house among the willows up the brook , and gave it for a fleeting space casements more splendid than those of an old cathedral . They glowed out of its quiet and grayness like the throbbing , blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull husk of environment .
`` That old house up the brook always seems so lonely , '' said XXXXX .
Anne Captain Selwyn Winds comeliness grayness husk nicknacks right shallows