“Come away from here,” Parthy said, through set lips, to Magnolia. And bore the child, protesting, up the aisle and into the security of her own room forward.
“I want to stay with Julie! I want to stay with Julie!” wailed Magnolia, overwrought, as the inexorable hand dragged her up the stairs.
In her tiny disordered room Julie was binding up her wild hair with a swift twist. She barely glanced at Elly. “Shut that woman up,” she said, quietly. “Tell her I’m going.” She began to open boxes and drawers.
Steve approached Andy, low-voiced. “Cap, take us down as far as Xenia, will you, for God’s sake! Don’t make us get off here.”
“Down as far as Xenia you go,” shouted Captain Andy at the top of his voice, “and anybody in this company don’t like it they’re free to git, bag and baggage, now. We’ll pull out of here now. Xenia by afternoon at four, latest. And you two want to stay the night on board you’re welcome. I’m master of this boat, by God!”
They left, these two, when the Cotton Blossom docked at Xenia in the late afternoon. Andy shook hands with them, gravely; and Windy clumped down from the pilot house to perform the same solemn ceremony. You sensed unseen peering eyes at every door and window of the Cotton Blossom and the Mollie Able.
“How you fixed for money?” Andy demanded, bluntly.
“We’re fixed all right,” Julie replied, quietly. Of the two of them she was the more composed. “We’ve been saving. You took too good care of us on the Cotton Blossom. No call to spend our money.” The glance from her dark shadow-encircled eyes was one of utter gratefulness. She took up the lighter pieces of luggage. Steve was weighed down with the others—bulging boxes and carpet bags and bundles—their clothing and their show-boat wardrobe and their pitifully few trinkets and personal belongings. A pin cushion, very lumpy, that Magnolia had made for her at Christmas a year ago. Photographs of the Cotton Blossom. A book of pressed wild flowers. Old newspaper clippings.
Julie lingered. Steve crossed the gangplank, turned, beckoned with his head. Julie lingered. An unspoken question in her eyes.
Andy flushed and scratched the mutton-chop whiskers this side and that. “Well, you know how she is, Julie. She don’t mean no harm. But she didn’t let on to Magnolia just what time you were going. Told her to-morrow, likely. Women folks are funny, that way. She don’t mean no harm.”