"Is that so? My lands! What's going to happen next? A girl drowned, and my husband and only son running away from me. It is terrible!"
With considerable effort John kept from smiling as he listened to Mrs. Tobin. What to her was a very serious matter, was to him cause for amusement. He was quite sure why the captain had sailed by Beech Cove without stopping as was his custom. Neither could he blame him. Any man would do the same who might have the misfortune to be united to such a woman as Mrs. Tobin. The captain was only acting in self-defence in his dash by his home and the wife he had chosen. John pictured to himself the state of affairs on the "Eb and Flo" had Mrs. Tobin gone aboard and there found the runaway girl. Explanation, he knew, would be useless, and it would be a very serious matter for the captain and his fair passenger. In fact, he felt quite proud of the captain's action, and considered him in the light of a hero. He pitied him as well, for he knew that he would have to face his wife's sharp tongue and searching questions upon his next visit home.
While the young man was thinking of these things, Mrs. Hampton was talking with her visitor. The latter was sipping a cup of tea, and nibbling at a piece of cake. She was becoming calmer under Mrs. Hampton's soothing influence, and inclined to take a brighter view of the situation.
"Keep up courage, Mrs. Tobin," John told her as he turned to leave the room. "I must hurry away now. If I happen to see the captain I shall tell him of your anxiety. You might, indeed, worry if your husband had the habit of running off with some other woman. But he is too old and steady for such nonsense." John knew how this would arouse the woman, for jealousy was one of her chief characteristics.
"That is just what I do fear," Mrs. Tobin replied. "Sam'l was always a little soft about women, and there are too many bad hussies in the city. When a man is away from home as much as he is, you can never be sure what he's up to. Why, even now he might have one of them brazen creatures on board. No, there's no fool like an old fool when it comes to women."
"But Eben's with him, isn't he? The captain wouldn't surely cut up any capers with his son on board."
"Eben! H'm! Little good would he be. He lives in the clouds when he isn't eating and sleeping. He wouldn't notice anything wrong with a dozen hussies on board. I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy."
"You are certainly worried about your family, Mrs. Tobin."
"Indeed I am, and no one knows it as well as I do. I'm not even certain of Flo. She has notions of her own which don't at all agree with my way of thinking."
John smiled broadly as he bade the woman good-bye, and left the house. Mrs. Tobin amused him greatly, and he was thinking of the lively scene that would take place when the captain came home.