“I heard the captain had to go to New York, Aunty Bell, and so I thought maybe you’d be alone,” said Mrs. Taft, taking off her bonnet. “No news from the runaway, I suppose? Ain’t it dreadful? She’s the last girl in the world I would ’a’ thought of doing a thing like that.”
“We ain’t none of us perfect, Mis’ Taft. Take a chair, Mr. Carleton. If we was, we could most of us stay here; there wouldn’t be no use o’ heaven.”
“But, Aunty Bell!” exclaimed the visitor, “you surely don’t think—Why, it’s awful for Betty to go and do what she did”—
“I ain’t judgin’ nobody, Mis’ Taft. I ain’t a-blamin’ Betty, an’ I ain’t a-blamin’ Caleb. I’m only thinkin’ of all the sufferin’ that poor child’s got to go through now, an’ what a mean world this is for her to have to live in.”
“Serves the old man right for marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter,” said Carleton, with a laugh, tilting back his chair,—his favorite attitude. “I made up my mind the first day I saw her that she was a little larky. She’s been fooling West all summer,—anybody could see that.” He had not forgiven the look in Caleb’s eye that afternoon aboard the Screamer. “When ’s the captain coming home?”
Aunty Bell looked at the superintendent, her lips curling, as the hard, dry laugh rang in her ears. She had never fancied him, and she liked him less now than ever. Her first impulse was to give him a piece of her mind,—an indigestible morsel when served hot. Then she remembered that her husband was having some difficulty with him about the acceptance of the concrete disk, and so her temper, chilled by this more politic second thought, cooled down and stiffened into a frigid determination not to invite him to dinner if she ate nothing herself all day.
“Cap’n 'll be here in the mornin’,” she answered curtly. “Got any message for him?”
“Yes. Tell him I was out to the Ledge yesterday with my transit, and the concrete is too low by six inches near the southeast derrick. It’s got to come up to grade before I can certify. I thought I’d come in and tell him,—he wanted to know.”
The door opened, and the tall form of Captain Bob Brandt, the Screamer’s skipper, entered.
“Excuse me, Mis’ Bell,” he said, removing his hat and bowing good-humoredly to everybody. “I saw ye pass, Mr. Carleton, an’ I wanted to tell ye that we’re ready now to h’ist sail fur the Ledge. We got 'leven stone on. Caleb ain’t workin’ this week, an’ one o’ the other divers’s a-goin’ to set ’em. Guess it’s all right; the worst is all done. Will you go out with us, or trust me to git ’em right?”