The Captain jumped. “I cal’late I’m getting nervous, jumping like that.”
“Or in love?”
“Maybe you’re right, Mack.”
“Honest confession?”
“I ain’t confessing nothing. I was referring to your idea that we’d best be under way,” explained the Captain, with a wry smile.
As he spoke he leaned over the engine, and gave it a turn. Tommy, Miss Pipkin’s black cat, was mincing contentedly at some scraps when the chug-chug of the exhaust shot from the side of the boat. Tommy shot from the cockpit. He paused on the upper step, a startled glare in his eyes. He forgot the tempting morsels; he forgot his rheumatism; he was bent on flight. And fly he did. With a wild yodeling yell he sprang forward. Like a black cyclone he circled the deck. On his fourth time round he caught sight of the minister’s legs. He and Elizabeth were standing at the wheel, ready to steer the boat out of the harbor. To the cat’s excited glance the man’s legs suggested the beginnings of tree trunks, at the top of which there was safety and repose from the spitting demon at the side of the boat. Like a flying bat he made the leap. But he had misjudged both the distance and his own rheumatic muscles. He landed on the girl, and came to a rest half-way to her shoulder. His claws sank into the thick folds of her sweater. Elizabeth released her hold on the wheel, and with a cry fell back against the 135 minister. A pair of strong arms lost neither time nor opportunity. With a little persuasion Tommy saw his mistake, and dropped to the deck. He took up his interrupted flight, finally coming to an uncertain rest somewhere aloft.
Elizabeth looked up, smiled, blushed like a peony, took hold the wheel, and gently released herself.
“Oh, thank you! Wasn’t it stupid of me to let that old cat frighten me so?”
Mr. McGowan declared that he was delighted to have been of service, and his emotions began to be very evident to him.