"You didn't win! You said four and there were only three."
"Four!"
"Three. Just three."
"Three? You can't count. There were four passengers—two men, one woman, and a dog. There! fifty cents, please!"
The last wheelbarrow, trundled by a sturdy Irish lad, had in it a clothes-basket with a blue-check apron tied neatly over it.
"Look out there, Moike!" cried the stewardess, springing to the side of the basket and steadying it across the narrow gangway. "Don't ye drop me table linen or—ye might git dropped yeself—see?" She said it with a saucy air and leaned toward him threatening a friendly cuff which he dodged while the man in front looked back and laughed good humoredly. "Give it to him!" he said.
"She just wants to flirt with him," said Harcourt. "That's the way you all make fools of us. Well, I don't suppose they have much to enliven their days."
As he said, it was not much time that Norah had with her sweetheart that day, but it was enough. As the cable was pulled in she called out gayly, "Put them clothes in the warehouse, Moike, till the wash-lady comes. She'll be there 'gin two o'clock."
The woman in the blue calico was toiling up the dusty street. She had not waited to see the unloading.
As the boat headed up-stream Bess started up.