Short Cruises. William Wymark Jacobs

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “That’ll do,” said the skipper, quickly.

      “You ought to hear Bill tell it,” said the mate, regretfully. “I can’t do it anything like as well as what he can. Made us all roar, he did. What amused ‘em most was you thinking that that gal was cookie’s sister.”

      The skipper, with a sharp exclamation, leaned forward, staring at him.

      “They’re going to be married at Christmas,” said the mate, choking in his cup.

      The skipper sat upright again, and tried manfully to compose his features. Many things he had not understood before were suddenly made clear, and he remembered now the odd way in which the girl had regarded him as she bade him good-night on the previous evening. The mate eyed him with interest, and was about to supply him with further details when his attention was attracted by footsteps descending the companion-ladder. Then he put down his cup with great care, and stared in stolid amazement at the figure of Miss Jewell in the doorway.

      “I’m a bit late,” she said, flushing slightly.

      She crossed over and shook hands with the skipper, and, in the most natural fashion in the world, took a seat and began to remove her gloves. The mate swung round and regarded her open-mouthed; the skipper, whose ideas were in a whirl, sat regarding her in silence. The mate was the first to move; he left the cabin rubbing his shin, and casting furious glances at the skipper.

      “You didn’t expect to see me?” said the girl, reddening again.

      “No,” was the reply.

      The girl looked at the tablecloth. “I came to beg your pardon,” she said, in a low voice.

      “There’s nothing to beg my pardon for,” said the skipper, clearing his throat. “By rights I ought to beg yours. You did quite right to make fun of me. I can see it now.”

      “When you asked me whether I was Bert’s sister I didn’t like to say ‘no,’” continued the girl; “and at first I let you come out with me for the fun of the thing, and then Bert said it would be good for him, and then—then—”

      “Yes,” said the skipper, after a long pause.

      The girl broke a biscuit into small pieces, and arranged them on the cloth. “Then I didn’t mind your coming so much,” she said, in a low voice.

      The skipper caught his breath and tried to gaze at the averted face.

      The girl swept the crumbs aside and met his gaze squarely. “Not quite so much,” she explained.

      “I’ve been a fool,” said the skipper. “I’ve been a fool. I’ve made myself a laughing-stock all round, but if I could have it all over again I would.”

      “That can never be,” said the girl, shaking her head. “Bert wouldn’t come.”

      “No, of course not,” asserted the other.

      The girl bit her lip. The skipper thought that he had never seen her eyes so large and shining. There was a long silence.

      “Good-by,” said the girl at last, rising.

      The skipper rose to follow. “Good-by,” he said, slowly; “and I wish you both every happiness.”

      “Happiness?” echoed the girl, in a surprised voice. “Why?”

      “When you are married.”

      “I am not going to be married,” said the girl, “I told Bert so this afternoon. Good-by.”

      The skipper actually let her get nearly to the top of the ladder before he regained his presence of mind. Then, in obedience to a powerful tug at the hem of her skirt, she came down again, and accompanied him meekly back to the cabin.

      HIS LORDSHIP

      FARMER ROSE sat in his porch smoking an evening pipe. By his side, in a comfortable Windsor chair, sat his friend the miller, also smoking, and gazing with half-closed eyes at the landscape as he listened for the thousandth time to his host’s complaints about his daughter.

      “The long and the short of it is, Cray,” said the farmer, with an air of mournful pride, “she’s far too good-looking.”

      Mr. Cray grunted.

      “Truth is truth, though she’s my daughter,” continued Mr. Rose, vaguely. “She’s too good-looking. Sometimes when I’ve taken her up to market I’ve seen the folks fair turn their backs on the cattle and stare at her instead.”

      Mr. Cray sniffed; louder, perhaps, than he had intended. “Beautiful that rose-bush smells,” he remarked, as his friend turned and eyed him.

      “What is the consequence?” demanded the farmer, relaxing his gaze. “She looks in the glass and sees herself, and then she gets miserable and uppish because there ain’t nobody in these parts good enough for her to marry.”

      “It’s a extraordinary thing to me where she gets them good looks from,” said the miller, deliberately.

      “Ah!” said Mr. Rose, and sat trying to think of a means of enlightening his friend without undue loss of modesty.

      “She ain’t a bit like her poor mother,” mused Mr. Cray.

      “No, she don’t get her looks from her,” assented the other.

      “It’s one o’ them things you can’t account for,” said Mr. Cray, who was very tired of the subject; “it’s just like seeing a beautiful flower blooming on an old cabbage-stump.”

      The farmer knocked his pipe out noisily and began to refill it. “People have said that she takes after me a trifle,” he remarked, shortly.

      “You weren’t fool enough to believe that, I know,” said the miller. “Why, she’s no more like you than you’re like a warming-pan—not so much.”

      Mr. Rose regarded his friend fixedly. “You ain’t got a very nice way o’ putting things, Cray,” he said, mournfully.

      “I’m no flatterer,” said the miller; “never was, and you can’t please everybody. If I said your daughter took after you I don’t s’pose she’d ever speak to me again.”

      “The worst of it is,” said the farmer, disregarding his remark, “she won’t settle down. There’s young Walter Lomas after her now, and she won’t look at him. He’s a decent young fellow is Walter, and she’s been and named one o’ the pigs after him, and the way she mixes them up together is disgraceful.”

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