“With Sam Hollis?”
“Yes, and flirted with half the men in the hall and with your Maurice Blake outrageously.”
“That so? Could Maurice help that much? But I wish, just the same, that Miss Foster had gone with Maurice.”
“Well, there was one very good reason.”
“What?”
“He didn’t ask her. And Mr. Withrow made a handsome cavalier anyway.”
“A handsome”––I was going to say lobster, but I didn’t. Instead I told her why Maurice didn’t ask Miss Foster––that he didn’t think enough of himself, probably. And that led up to a talk about Maurice Blake and Clancy. Before I got through I had Nell won over. Indeed, I think she was won over before I began at all.
“There’s a whole lot you don’t know yet,” she 55 said at last. “Get Captain Blake to make a name for himself seining, and for sailing his vessel as she ought to be sailed, and I’ll get down on my knees to Alice for him––sail her as she ought to be sailed, remember. And make a good stock with her, and you’ll see.”
So, as I walked down the street with Nell and Will Somers a part of the way, the talk was in that strain, and when I left them, after passing Sam Hollis bound home, it was with the hope of things coming out all right. I was feeling happy until I got near Minnie Arkell’s door, where my worrying began again, for there on the steps and in the glare of the electric light was Minnie Arkell herself, as though she were waiting for somebody. And not wanting to have her know that I saw her waiting at her door steps at that time of night, I stepped in the shadows until she should go in. It was then that Maurice came along, and she called him up. And he went up and stood on the step below her and she bent over him as if she wanted to lift him up. And it was less than five minutes since Sam Hollis left her.
“Come around by way of the side door of grandma’s house, Maurice, and through her yard and into my house, and nobody will see you. And then no old grannies will talk and we’ll have a little supper all to ourselves. Hurry now.” She was 56 talking as if she owned him. I did not hear what Maurice said, nor I did not want to hear; but making for the corner, he went by me like a shot, and “O Lord!” I heard him groan as he passed me, not recognizing me––not even seeing me, I believe.