“Well, but what becomes of the money that should ’ave been ’ers—the money you’ve diddled me out of?” cried the captain.
“Why,” said Horace, softly, “it just stays with us!”
“And you knew this when you advised me to get married on the quiet to Ann, yonder?”
“Certingly,” said the unabashed Horace. “Didn’t we both agree that ‘Strictly Business!’ was a jolly good motter?”
“And you,” went on the skipper, wheeling on his bride—“you didn’t tell me nothing, for fear of losing me?”
“And so I should have,” she said. “And don’t you stare at me like that, neither! If you think that I’m the kind of wife that can be bullied, you’re making a big mistake! And now I’ll get my portmanteau, and you can take me down to your cabin on the ‘Alert.’ You don’t think I’m going to stay on in the house with these people, do you?”
“Still, any time you’re passing,” said the cook, “I’ll be pleased to welcome my stepdaughter and my son-in-law. I don’t bear no ill-will, and I shouldn’t like to think that others would.”
“Well, you’ve lost your berth on the ‘Alert,’ any way,” said Captain Gooster, inadequately. “You needn’t think I’d ’ave you now, because I shouldn’t!”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t accept it, in any case,” said Mr. Horace Dobb. “’Oo’s to look after the shop? You said yourself that it needed a man, and I’ve provided myself for it. And you know ’ow useful I can make myself, don’t you?”
That evening, when Messrs. Lock and Tridge and Clark, hearing something of what had transpired, trooped down to Fore Street to find Horace, they discovered him already engaged in bringing the stock and fixtures into line with his own ideas on such matters.