CHAPTER XIV
HANTS AND OTHER THINGS
Down below, at supper, the injured housekeeper was still in evidence and rose to a charge that the fish was over-fried. Satan was the accuser.
The defendant, “het up” and flushed, replied in the language of the sea:
“Go’n fry your head! Clackin’ on deck and leavin’ me to do the work—the pair of you! It’s all men’s good for.”
“Why, I thought you was a man!” said Satan. “You cut and carry on like a man; scratch you and your tongue goes both ends like a woman. Start you on a job, and you sit down to it before it’s half done. I saw you lazin’ on the beach, and now look where we are,—there’s a sack of stuff not brought off and how are we to bring it with Cleary messin’ round?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Jude. Then she checked herself and her eyes met Ratcliffe’s.
“It was my fault,” said he. “I got tired.”
Jude looked at him. This defense of her, trifling though it was, seemed to make a new relationship between them. It seemed to her that Ratcliffe had suddenly become different. She could not tell what the difference was or how it had come about in the least, or why she half-resented his shielding her, even in this small matter; then her eyes fell away and rested on the table before her.