“Oh! Oh, it’s you!” she came out enough to say, and then went back. The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders back, eyes looking right through you—what kind of a Jude was this! Was she walking in her sleep?
“Hullo, I said,” he repeated. “If you’ve left your manners to home—”
“Oh!—oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking.”
“Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never indulge, myself. Well, how’s luck?”
“Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?” Judith had not been busy thinking of lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. “Oh, Jem! I never got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just long enough not to be short. It means—I suppose it means a bad season, doesn’t it?”
Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith’s evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded muttery.
“Guess somethin’ ails your traps,” he had said. “Warn’t nothin’ the matter with mine.”
“Did you get more than three?”
“Got a-plenty.”
“Jemmy Three, how many’s a-plenty?”