“Listen, you,” said Christine. “There’s two upstart men in the house now, seeking you and the other. There’s trouble and damage on the head of it. From the asylum they are. To the police they have been, to put an embargo on the reward, and sorra a sixpence you’ll receive of the fifty pounds of it: to the expenses of the asylum it must go, they say. The treachery! Devil and all, the blood sweating on every coin of it would rot the palm of a nigger. Do you hear me at all?”
She gave him a little shaking for he was standing stupid, gazing at the bay which was dying into grave darkness except for the wash of its broken waves.
“Do you hear me at all? It’s quit now you should, my little old man, or they’ll be taking you.”
“Ah, yes, sure, I hear you, Christine; thank you kindly. Just looking and listening I was. I’ll be stirring from it now, and I’ll get on and I’ll go. Just looking and listening I was, just a wee look.”
“Then good-bye to you, Mr. Tool,” said Christine Horan, and turning from him she left him in the darkness and went running up the ropewalk to her home.
Tribute
Two honest young men lived in Braddle, worked together at the spinning mills at Braddle, and courted the same girl in the town of Braddle, a girl named Patience who was poor and pretty. One of them, Nathan Regent, who wore cloth uppers to his best boots, was steady, silent, and dignified, but Tony Vassall, the other, was such a happy-go-lucky fellow that he soon carried the good will of Patience in his heart, in his handsome face, in his pocket at the end of his nickel watch chain, or wherever the sign of requited love is carried by the happy lover. The virtue of steadiness, you see, can be measured only by the years, and this Tony had put such a hurry into the tender bosom of Patience: silence may very well be golden, but it is a currency not easy to negotiate in the kingdom of courtship; dignity is so much less than simple faith that it is unable to move even one mountain, it charms the hearts only of bank managers and bishops.
So Patience married Tony Vassall and Nathan turned his attention to other things, among them to a girl who had a neat little fortune—and Nathan married that.
Braddle is a large gaunt hill covered with dull little houses, and it has flowing from its side a stream which feeds a gigantic and beneficent mill. Without that mill—as everybody in Braddle knew, for it was there that everybody in Braddle worked—the heart of Braddle would cease to beat. Tony went on working at the mill. So did Nathan in a way, but he had a cute ambitious wife, and what with her money and influence he was soon made a manager of one of the departments. Tony went on working at the mill. In a few more years Nathan’s steadiness so increased his opportunities that he became joint manager of the whole works. Then his colleague died; he was appointed sole manager, and his wealth became so great that eventually Nathan and Nathan’s wife bought the entire concern. Tony went on working at the mill. He now had two sons and a daughter, Nancy, as well as his wife Patience, so that even his possessions may be said to have increased although his position was no different from what it had been for twenty years.