"Just like I didn't have my hands full now, without bringing home any more mouths to feed," she fumed. "Like as not he's a good-for-nothing like Jim Dilks, and will only make us trouble right along. Keep him over at the station if you want, Abner Peake, but you don't quarter him on me. This is my house, and I'm to be consulted before anybody is brought here."
Abner had apparently thought this all over.
He simply took Darry's hand and drew the half resisting lad over in front of the irate woman.
"Nancy, I never knowed yuh to be anything but fair. S'posin' our leetle Joe was kerried out to sea, an' in a strange land met up with a citizen as took him home to his wife. What kinder reception do yuh think he'd get? Could any woman look in Joe's face an' send him away from her door? Wall, then, jest look in the face o' this boy, an' then if so be yuh say take him away, I'll do it, Nancy," he said, simply.
Almost against her will she was compelled to look.
Well it was for Darry that he had clear eyes in which lurked no guile, for that gaze of the surfman's "missus" was searching, since she had before her mind a picture of the lost Joe.
She only nodded her head and said:
"Let him stay."
Perhaps she was too full of emotion to say more; but the husband nodded his head as though satisfied with what he had done.
"It's all right, boy; she seen Joey in your eyes, jest as I done. Seems to me yuh kin make good with the ole woman. Don't notice all she says fur a time. Sure she's suffered some."