"There ain't nothing much we can rightly do at this minute, Niece Louise," he told her firmly, still patting her morsel of a hand in his huge one. "We'll watch the noospapers and I'll send a telegraph dispatch to the ship news office in N'York and git just the latest word there is 'bout the Curlew.
"You be brave, girl—you be brave. Abe an' Professor Grayling being
together, o' course they'll get along all right. One'll help t'other.
Two pullin' on the sheet can allus h'ist the sail quicker than one.
Keep your heart up, Louise."
She looked at him strangely for a moment. The tears frankly standing in his eyes, the quivering muscles of his face, his expression of keen sorrow for her fears—all impressed her. She suddenly kissed him in gratitude, impostor though she knew him to be, and then ran away. Cap'n Joab hissed across the counter:
"Ye don't know that Cap'n Abe's on that there craft, Am'zon Silt!"
"Well, if I don't—an' if you don't—don't lemme hear you makin' any cracks about it 'round this store so't she'll hear ye," growled Cap'n Amazon, boring into the very soul of the flustered Joab with his fierce gaze.
Louise did not hear the expression of these doubts; but she suffered uncertainties in her own mind. She longed to talk with somebody to whom she could tell all that was in her thoughts. Aunt Euphemia was out of the question, of course; although she must reveal to her the possible peril menacing Professor Grayling. Betty Gallup could not be trusted, Louise knew. And the day dragged by its limping hours without Lawford Tapp's coming near the store on the Shell Road.
This last Louise could not understand. But there was good reason for Lawford's effacing himself at this time. In the empire of the Taffy King there was revolution, and this trouble dated from the hour on the previous morning when Louise had met and greeted Aunt Euphemia on the beach.
The Tapp sisters may have been purse-proud and a little vulgar—from Aunt Euphemia's point of view, at least—but they did not lack acumen. They had seen and heard the greeting of Louise by the Ferritons and the extremely haughty Lady from Poughkeepsie, and knew that Louise must be "a somebody."
Cecile, young and bold enough to be direct, was not long in making discoveries. With a rather blank expression of countenance L'Enfant Terrible, for once almost speechless, beckoned her sisters to one side.
"Pestiferous infant," drawled Marian, "tell us who she is?"