But with Alice it was not so; she held the captain in a natural abhorrence, and shrank from him as people sometimes do from a toad or other reptile, when she happened to meet him in passages, staircases, or out-of-the-way corners, never permitting him to approach her unless protected by the company of her aunt.
Mrs. Dodge, however, would sometimes spend an hour and more in certain household duties upstairs, leaving Alice to mind the bar during her absence. The girl was singing over her needlework, according to custom, thinking, in all probability, of Slap-Jack, when, much to her annoyance, the captain’s red nose protruded itself over the half-door, followed, in due course, by his laced coat, his jack-boots, and the rest of his gaudy, tarnished, and somewhat dissipated person.
Seeing Alice alone, he affected to start with pleasure, made a feint of retiring, and then insinuated himself towards the fireplace, with a theatrical gallantry that was to her, of all his airs and graces, the most insupportable.
“Divine Alice!” he exclaimed, flourishing his dirty hand, adorned with rings, “alone in her bower, and singing over her sampler like a siren. The jade Fortune owed honest Jack Bold this turn. Strike him blind if she didn’t! He comes for a vulgar drain, and lo! a cordial—the elixir of life—the rosy dew of innocence—the balmy breath of beauty!”
“What d’ye lack, sir?” asked Alice, contemptuously ignoring this rhodomontade, and stretching her pretty hand towards a shelf loaded with divers preparations of alcohol well known to the visitor.
“What I lacked, my sweetest,” said the unabashed captain, “when I entered this bower of bliss and bastion of beauty, was a mere mortal’s morning draught—a glass of strong waters, we will say, with a clove in it, or perhaps a mouthful of burnt brandy, to keep out the raw moorland air. What I lack now, since I have seen your lovely lips, seems to be the chaste salute valour claims from beauty. We will take the brandy and cloves afterwards!”
So speaking, the captain moved a little round table out of his way, and, taking off his cocked hat with a flourish, advanced the red nose and forbidding face very close to Alice, as if to claim the desired salute. In his operations, the skirt of his heavily laced coat brought work, work-box, thimble, and all to the ground.
Alice stooped to pick them up. When she rose again her colour was very bright, possibly from the exertion, and she pointed once more to the bottles.
“Give your orders, sir,” said she, angrily, “and go! I am sure I never—I never expected to be rude to a customer, but—there—it’s too bad—I won’t stand it, I won’t—not if I go up to my aunt in her bedroom this very minute!”
Poor Alice was now dissolved in tears, but, true to her instincts, filled the captain his glass of brandy all the same.