EVENING AT THE RED MILL
About this time Uncle Jabez began to wake up to the fact that his boat and the flour were gone.
"It's a dumbed shame, Jabez! an' I needed that flour like tunket," said Timothy Lakeby, the storekeeper.
"Huh!" grunted the miller. "'Tain't nothin' out o' your pocket, Tim."
"But my customers air wantin' it."
"You lemme hev your boat, an' a boy to bring it back, an' we'll go right hum an' load ye up some more flour," groaned the miller. "That dratted Ben will be back by thet time, I fancy. Ef he'd been ter the mill I wouldn't hev been dependent upon my niece ter help row that old boat."
"Too heavy for her—too heavy for her, Jabe," declared Joe Bascom.
"Huh! is thet so?" snapped the miller. He could grumble to Ruth himself, but he would not stand for any other person's criticism of her. "Lemme tell ye, she worked her passage all right. An' I vum! I b'lieve thet 'twas me, myself, thet run the old tub on the rock."
"Aside from the flour, Jabez," said the storekeeper, "'tain't much of a loss. But you an' Ruthie might ha' both been drowned."
"I would, if it hadn't been for her," declared the miller, with more enthusiasm than he usually showed. "She held my head up when I was knocked out—kinder. Ye see this cut in my head?"