“My gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Teller springing out of bed and grabbing the first article of clothing she could lay her hands on. “Wait, Det; you’ll have to have something to eat on the way.”
“Shiver my fence posts if I ever thought o’ that,” exclaimed the excited farmer-sailor, “stopping in his tracks.” “I always said it was a lucky day when I married you. First I lost my head when I fell in love, then I ran away ’cause you broke my heart, and since the parson tied the knot you’ve saved my life forty-’leven times over.”
Mrs. Teller had long since been cured of her early coquettishness and it was safe enough for her jovial husband to talk in that manner. She was in no mood to pay any attention to nonsense just now. She loved Mrs. Burton with the devotion of long and faithful employment, and could think of nothing but haste and speed in assisting her husband to get ready.
“You’ll want some money, too,” she added, going to a dresser and turning on an electric light over it. Then she fished a key out of a button-box and unlocked and opened a small drawer in the upper part of the dresser.
“Here’s all but ten dollars of last month’s salary,” she said, handing a roll of bills to her husband. “Take it; you may need it. You may run out of gasoline and food, and Walter won’t have any money.”
Det took the roll and pinned it in an inside pocket of his vest.
“I’ll have you a bag full of dinner in a jiffy,” she added, as she ran with stockinged feet, into the kitchen. There she struck a light and “flew about” in a manner that would have been quite satisfactory to impatient Walter could he have seen her.
“How’d you get the news?” she asked, seizing a pot of boiled potatoes she intended to fry for breakfast and dumping them into an empty flour sack.
Det told her all he knew while she filled two sacks with promiscuous edibles, including pies, bread, cookies, cold boiled meat, and a smoked ham.
“There,” she said as she finished; “you take these sacks, and I’ll carry this basket of apples and this basket of raw potatoes, and we’ll go.”