“We represent the Feeling of a Community. We——”
“And this,” observed Ho Ha, not waiting for her, “is another community. If you represent any feelings except your own and those of a few other meddlesome women, Miss Errily, it’s the first time in forty years—you’re about sixty-two, aren’t you? My father was in your first class and you were about twenty-two then.”
“Hosea!” said the keeper, in a low tone of rebuke, but he shook oddly as he said it.
“My age,” quivered Miss Errily, “whatever it is, should be sufficient to insure Respectful Treatment.” But she was obviously upset. Mrs. Brand took her place.
“Insult me, if you dare, Hosea Hand!” she cried, challengingly. Ho Ha looked at her thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t tell any one to his face what you write about people to other people, Maria Brand,” he rejoined. “I still have your letter in which you wrote me that Cap’n Smiley’s sister——”
“I never wrote such a letter!” almost shrieked Maria Brand, with a look of half terror at the keeper, whose eye, fixed on the glittering ocean, remained there. Ho Ha, turning to Mrs. Dayton as if he were finishing a sentence addressed to her, went on implacably.
“—if you must look after other people’s children, why not look after your husband’s?” Mrs. Dayton went red and white, half opened her lips, and then started to walk rapidly away. The ranks had broken. Miss Errily and Maria Brand, followed by Mrs. Horton, were also in rapid retreat in the direction taken by Amelia Dayton who had no children, and whose husband’s did not bear the name of Dayton. Cap’n Smiley frowned on his surfman. “That was going too far!” he censured him.
“Not a bit, not a bit!” said Ho Ha with heat. “Nothing but a pack of busybodies! Dick Dayton’s brats roll in dirt while Amelia Dayton lends money at usury. My regret is that I didn’t get a chance to ask Jane Horton if she had paid her farmer’s fine yet. You know he watered the milk and I can guess by whose orders!”