Jude looked at Ratcliffe and grinned.
“Rub your nose and pretend to be cryin’,” came a voice from below.
“What for should I be cryin’?” answered Jude.
“God A’mighty! I’ll show you if I get on deck! Ain’t I drunk and cuttin’ up? What else would you be doin’? I’ll larn you!”
A smash of crockery came from below that made the housekeeper spring to the cabin skylight.
“Quit foolin’,” cried she. “I’m willin’ to rub the damn nose off my head, but stop smashin’ the plates—what have you broke?”
Another plate went.
“I’m rubbin’.”
“Here they are!” cried Ratcliffe.
Jude’s nose did not seem to want any rubbing, nor her face. Descended from generations of crockery worshipers and careful housewives, instinctively hating Cleary, Sellers, Cark, and all their belongings, feeling with perfect illogic that they had been done out of the treasure by the “skelentons” somehow through Cark, she was convincing. Satan with rare art had worked her up to the part. She was not crying: her mind was raging above tears.