After a while the storm passed, and Nellie sat up, red-eyed and red-nosed, but with a measure of her usual tranquillity restored.
“Idiot!” she told herself. “To howl like that over him!”
Nellie finally regained her poise of mind and remembered that she had been at the point of writing a letter to her mother (to be mailed by the first vessel bound to a port) when Nat had interrupted her.
The table at which she sat was a rough, square one of oak, with one drawer that extended its whole width. She opened the drawer and found it stuffed with an untidy mass of paper, envelopes, newspapers, clippings, books, ink, and a mucilage-pot that had foundered in the last gale and spread its contents over everything.
Such was her struggle to find two clean sheets of paper and a pen that she finally dumped the contents of the drawer on top of the table and went to the task seriously. The very first thing that came under her hand was a heavy packet.
Turning it face up, she read, with surprise, a large feminine handwriting which said:
Mr. Code Schofield, kindness of Captain B. Tanner
Letter enclosed.
At the right-hand side of the envelope was this:
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5–––10s 10–––5s 50–––1s –––––– $150 |