“What are you doing here, Bill Lacey?” she asked. “Why ain’t you at the Ledge?”
Although the young rigger had been but a short time on the captain’s force, he had employed every leisure moment of it in making himself agreeable to the wives of the men. To Betty his attentions had been most marked.
He had saved her the best of the long thin shavings that curled from his spoke-shave when he was planing the huge derrick masts on the wharf. And when she came to gather them as kindling for her stove, he had done everything in his power to win her confidence, detaining her in talk long after the other women had departed with their loads.
When he answered her sally to-day, his white teeth gleamed under his curling mustache.
“Captain wants me,” he said, “to fit some bands round the new derricks. We expect ’em over from Medford to-day, if it clears up.”
“An’ there ain’t no doubt but what ye’ll get yer job, Billy,” burst out the captain; “it’s breakin’ now over Crotch Island,” and he bustled again out of the open door, the men who had followed him turning back after him.
Carleton waited until he became convinced that no part of his immaculate personality burdened Betty’s mind, and then, a little disconcerted by her evident preference for Lacey, joined Sanford in the next room. There he renewed his complaint about the enrockment block having been placed without a notification to him, and it was not until Sanford invited him on the tug for a run to Medford to inspect Mrs. Leroy’s new dining-room that he became pacified.
As Mrs. Bell and the schoolmistress, Miss Peebles, were still in the pantry, a rattling of china marking their progress, the kitchen was empty except for Lacey and Betty. The young rigger, seeing no one within hearing, crossed the room, and, bending over Betty’s chair, said in a low tone, “Why didn’t you come down to the dock yesterday when we was a-hoistin’ the stone on the Screamer? ’Most everybody ’longshore was there. I had some chips saved for ye.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Betty indifferently.
“Ye ought’er seen the old man yesterday,” continued Lacey; “me an’ him held the guy, and he was a-blowin’ like a porpoise.”