"Father, that's not fair of you! I'm as careful as ever I can be. We're obliged to have bread! Won't you see Silas yourself? Perhaps he'll continue to supply us, if you can arrange to pay him part of what we owe. Of course, he wants his money."
"He's another of your teetotal humbugs!" sneered the angry man.
"He isn't a humbug at all!" Salome retorted hotly, her indignation and sense of justice overcoming her fear of her father; "but he did say he wasn't minded to wait for his money when it was being squandered with that drunken crew at the 'Crab and Cockle.' Oh, father, it was terrible for me to hear that, and I couldn't contradict him!"
With a fierce oath, Josiah pushed back his chair and rose from the table, declaring things had come to a pretty pass when his own daughter, a mere child, thought fit to discuss him with outsiders.
Salome broke into passionate weeping at this, whereupon he flung himself out of the kitchen, and the next minute she heard his footsteps in the garden.
"He's gone to the 'Crab and Cockle' again," thought the unhappy little girl. "Oh, how could he swear at me like that? Oh, how shall I bear it!" Presently she arose, put away the supper things and then sat down by the open window to wait, as she knew she would have to do, until the inn door was closed for the night, and her father would return. By-and-by, the soft lap, lap of the sea had a soothing effect upon her troubled spirit, the peacefulness of the summer night stole into her soul, and she murmured to herself the words of consolation she had sung an hour or so before in the dim, old church:
"When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me."
[CHAPTER V.]
Salome's Humiliation.
JOSIAH PETHERICK sat on the beach mending his fishing nets in the shade of a tall rock. It was intensely hot, and there was scarcely a ripple on the glassy sea, whilst the sky was a broad canopy of blue. Josiah was thinking deeply. That morning, consequent on the information his daughter had given him on the previous evening, he had been to interview Silas Moyle, and had induced the baker to allow him further credit. Never in his life before had Josiah found himself in such a humiliating position, and he felt it all the more because it was entirely his own fault. He had always prided himself on being able to pay his way, and now he was not in the position to do so.