Mrs. Barton stopped as suddenly as Peter had cried out, faced about, and looked blankly at the object who gave the command.
"Come back!" roared Peter again.
The poor woman, having no reason to be independent about the matter, went hesitatingly toward him. When she came up to the blinking idol of greed, she stood waiting for him to speak further.
"Take your old things, and tell Bill the next time he comes into my place of business I'll tear him to pieces," he cried. "I've had enough of him already. He's nothing but an old sot, unworthy of a woman like you," now with commiseration in his sordid heart for her, and only condemnation for her weak husband. "Take them, and go, and tell him that I'll get even with him sometime."
"Thank you; thank you," said Mrs. Barton, with a gleam of merciful gratitude in her eyes for this philanthropic pig.
"Eli," said Peter, without returning a "welcome" to Mrs. Barton, as he turned to that dutiful menial, "give the woman her trumphery and let her begone."
Then rubbing his hands more furiously, and squinting his eyes more swiftly and gritting his teeth more viciously at the turn this action of benefaction gave his conscience, he waddled to his black office, where he resumed his smoking, and took to calculating to a certainty as to how he could recover from some one else the small pittance he was out by this disreputable transaction, as he termed it, on the part of Billy Barton, the waterman.
Eli Jerey at once proceeded to obey his superior, for that was his only aim at that period in his life. Into a gunny sack he piled the chipped and broken dishes, the battered pans, the rusty iron forks and knives, and tin spoons, composing the entire culinary outfit of Kate Barton.
With the sack thus loaded, Mrs. Barton swung it once in front of her, and with a quick jerk whirled it over her right shoulder, bent under it as if it were of great weight, said good bye to Eli, and strode out, with Star following. They crossed the street and went down the glacis of the cobblestoned wharf. Following the water's edge, they passed among the miscellaneous collection of freight piled high on every hand. Over taut ropes, holding boats, barges and rivermen's houses, they stepped, catching their toes now and then, and almost falling; proceeding ever on, through all kinds of heaps and piles of freightage; ever on, among the men moving about performing their duties silently. Ever on, Kate Barton led the way, a tireless, fearless, forbidding being, who created no more comment among the habitues of this district than if she were nowhere to be seen; till, at last, she, like one with the joy of success bound up in a spiritless heart, arrived where a dog-boat lay tethered to a ring-bolt in the stone abutment of the Point bridge.
Into the boat she tumbled her bundle, with no thought as to the result such an act might have upon the dishes, ordered Star to climb in and take a seat in the rear, untied the rope, and jumped in herself as she gave the boat a shove into the stream. Taking up the oars she bent to them with the energy of a man, and pulled through the puffing, snorting, wheezing, churning craft for the farther shore—where house boats lay moored; where shanties hugged dangerously close to the water line; where decrepit buildings stood in all stages of deformity; where every inch of ground on the narrow space between the margin of the river and the verticle cliff behind was utilized to its utmost with everything imaginable, from the detritus of the hill to a pretentious manufacturing plant of equivocal worth in its baleful aspect. The hill above was straight up and down, almost, rock ribbed and bleak, a barrier to the pleasant places above and beyond; and at its base a railway system held indisputable sway; while betwixt it and the river were the straggling homes of men, with a few stunted and wheezy domesticated animals and fowls roaming about them.