“Come in, Caleb, come in!” cried Captain Joe in a cheery voice, laying his hand on the diver’s shoulder. “Take off yer ileskins.” The captain never despaired of bringing husband and wife together, somehow.
Betty was sitting inside the kitchen, reading by the kerosene lamp, out of sound of the voices.
“No, I ain’t washed up nor had supper yit, thank ye. I heared from Aunty Bell that Betty was laid up this week, an’ so I come down.” Here Caleb stopped, and began slitting the pay-envelope with a great thumb-nail shaped like a half-worn shoe-horn. “I come down, thinkin’ maybe you’d kind’er put this where she could git it,” slowly unrolling two of the four bills and handing them to the captain. “I don’t like her to be beholden to ye for board nor nothin’.”
“Ye can’t give me a cent, Caleb. I knowed her ’fore you did,” said the captain, protesting with his hand upraised, a slightly indignant tone in his voice. Then a thought crept into his mind. “Come in and give it to her yerself, Caleb,” putting his arm through the diver’s.
“No,” said Caleb slowly, “I ain’t come here for that, and I don’t want ye to make no mistake, cap’n. I come here ’cause I been a-thinkin’ it over, and somehow it seems to me that half o’ this is hern. I don’t want ye to tell ’er that I give it to her, ’cause it ain’t so. I jes’ want ye to lay it som’eres she’ll find it; and when she asks about it, say it’s hern.”
Captain Joe crumpled the bills in his hand.
“Caleb,” he said, “I ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ more to ye. I’ve said all I could, and las’ time I said too much; but what seems to me to be the cussedest foolishness out is for ye to go back an’ git yer supper by yerself, when the best little gal you or I know is a-settin’ within ten feet o’ ye with her heart breakin’ to git to ye.”
“I’m sorry she’s sufferin’, Cap’n Joe. I don’t like to see nobody suffer, leastways Betty, but ye don’t know it all. Jes’ leave them bills as I asked ye. Tell Aunty Bell I got the pie she sent me when I come home,—I’ll eat it to-morrow. I s’pose ye ain’t got no new orders ’bout that last row of enrockment? I set the bottom stone to-day, an’ I ought’er get the last of ’em finished nex’ week. The tide cut turrible to-day, an’ my air comin’ so slow through the pump threw me ’mong the rocks an’ seaweed, an’ I got a scrape on my hand,” showing a deep cut on its back; “but it’s done hurtin’ now. Good-night.”
On his way home, just before he reached his cabin, Caleb came upon Bert Simmons, the shore road letter-carrier, standing in the road, under one of the village street lamps, overhauling his package of letters.
“About these letters that’s comin’ for yer wife, Caleb? Shall I leave ’em with you or take ’em down to Cap’n Joe Bell’s? I give the others to her. Here’s one now.”