“I reckon they’ll keep, seeing they aren’t caught yet. What fools we were to go off just then! How do you suppose, in this mortal world, those women and girls had gumption enough to run away with that house-boat? I’ll bet they did it just to get ahead of me, ’cause I’d said plain enough I wouldn’t go to any old hole-in-the-woods. I simply wouldn’t. And I shan’t. I’ll get passage on one these fruit-scows going back to Baltimore and quit the whole thing. I will so;” declared Gerald, fuming about the wharf in a fine rage.
“Got money left for your ‘passage?’” asked Jim. He was pondering how best and soonest to “follow” the Water Lily, as he had been bid. They were all too tired with their rowing to do any more of it that day, and his pride shrank from hiring a wagon, for his own convenience, that he wasn’t able to pay for.
“What about your monkey, Gerry?” queried Melvin.
“Oh! I’ll—I mean—you take it off my hands till—later.”
“No, thank you. I’ve invested all I can afford in monkeys just now, don’t you know? But I’d sell out, only I do want to give them to her. She’s such a darling of a girl, to entertain us like this. She might have been born in our Province, I fancy, she’s so like a Canadian in kindness and generosity.”
It was a long speech for modest Melvin and an enthusiastic one. He blushed a little as he felt his comrades’ eyes turned teasingly upon him, but he did not retract his words. He added to them:
“Dorothy Calvert makes me think of my mother, don’t you know? And a girl that does that is an all right sort I fancy. Anyway, I’ve thought lots of times, since I found out it was she and not the rich aunt who was paying the expenses of our jaunt, that it was mighty unselfish of her to do it. Jim’s let that ‘cat out the bag.’ He was too top-lofty to take a cent of profit from that mine he discovered last summer for Mr. Ford, but all the girls were made small shareholders and got three hundred dollars a-piece for a send-off. Miss Molly, whose father I work for, put hers right into gew-gaws or nonsense, but I think Dolly’s done better. The least I can do to show her my appreciation is to give her the monkeys.”
“Speak for yourself, sir, please. Half that monkey transaction is mine, and I don’t intend to impoverish myself for any girl. I mean to train them till they’re worth a lot of money, then sell them.”
“Oh! no you won’t. You’re not half bad, don’t you know? You like to talk something fierce but it’s talk. If it isn’t, pick out your own monk and be off with it. You’ll have to leave me the cage for Dorothy because she’ll have to keep my monk, her monk, the monk in it sometimes.”