“Your middle name isn’t by chance Richard, is it?”
“I tried to have it that way,” he explained, “but——”
“The family voted you down, I suppose.”
“Exactly. You see, Mrs. Norris——”
“Drat Mrs. Norris!” she interrupted. “A man with only front names can’t have any advantages over me. You’ll call me Phœbe, young man, as everybody else does. You don’t suppose I’m goin’ to delay our intimacy by Misterin’ you, do you?” She turned abruptly to Jerry. “Just what claims have you on this beautiful person, Jerry? I want to know at once. The look of him sets me all a-flutter.”
“None whatever,” laughed Jerry. “But don’t make him any vainer, Phœbe. He’s stuffed with pride as it is.”
“Ach!” Phœbe tossed her head. “I’ll take that out of him. My method is to puff him full of flattery till he explodes—feed him till he’s sick of it.”
“If flattery be the food of love, play on,” cried Richard.
And so they joked and grew acquainted. Amid interruptions and laughter Jerry managed to piece out an explanation of her meeting with Richard, of Mrs. Wells’ interest in him, and of Richard’s plans for the saving of Walter.
“Poor lad!” Phœbe grew serious. “Walter spent the night out on this porch just before you sailed. He had got hold of a quart of whisky somehow and was beginning on it, but I wheedled it out of him. He was going to toss it into the Lake, but I tried other tactics on him. I told him to put it on that shelf up there.” She pointed to a small projection near the roof of her small cottage. A brown bottle obviously three-quarters full was in ample view. “I told him that he must fight the devil a stand-up fight. He slept out here all night, and there it is—just as he left it.”