“You are not! That’s all there is to that. It’s bad enough to come down here and live half the year doing nothing and seeing nothing while you fritter away your time building boats you don’t want, and nobody wants, I guess. But you mark what I say, I ain’t goin’ to go mopin’ around in black the rest o’ my life pretending you weren’t crazy when you committed suicide. And if you don’t tell me this minute you’ll stay down on the ground, I’ll smash every stick in this fool killer.”
“I—I—” began the captain again.
As he hesitated, his irate wife sprang forward with her skillet in the air. The fragile varnished spruce stanchions were at her mercy.
“I promise,” capitulated her husband. “I won’t try it.”
“Then you come right in to breakfast,” exclaimed Mrs. Anderson. “And if you want my advice, you’ll put a match to that whole contraption and try to get back to your senses again. You, too, Andrew,” she said hotly as she passed the alarmed lad. “You’re both clean crazy.”
Despite this domestic conflict, Captain Anderson and Andy could not resist a surreptitious glance now and again and a covert smile. But Mrs. Anderson was in earnest, and the old-time silence about the new aeroplane was resumed at the breakfast table.
“Othello’s occupation’s gone,” said Captain Anderson in a low voice as he and the boy left the house.
“He may come to-night,” almost whispered Andy, referring to Roy Osborne. “Hadn’t we better go ahead?”
Captain Anderson nodded his head toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Anderson could be heard making far more than ordinary kitchen clatter.