“No, I’ll bet you can’t. It isn’t often she comes down the dock. Miss Foster no less. ‘And what makes you think I won’t?’ I asks her. ‘Oh, of course I know you will,’ she says, ‘and deliver it to him in good order, too.’ ‘I’ll try,’ I says, as though it was a desp’rate job I had on hand––to put a seine in the hold and turn it over to another vessel when I met her. ‘But what makes you worry about this partic’lar seine, Miss Foster?’ I asks.”
“Which Miss Foster was it, Wesley––the one your vessel is named after?” broke in our skipper.
“No––no––but the younger one––Alice. ‘But what makes you worry?’ I asks her, and she didn’t say anything, but that one that’s with her all the time––the one that goes with the lad that designed the Johnnie Duncan–––”
“Joe’s cousin here–––”
“That’s it––the fat little Buckley girl––a fine girl too. And if I was a younger man and looking for a wife, there’s the kind for me––but anyway she up and says, ‘Alice is worried, Captain Marrs, 121 because she owns a third of Captain Blake’s vessel––a good part of her little fortune’s in the Duncan––and if anything happens to the seine one-third of it, of course, comes out of her. And it cost a good many hundred dollars. So you must be careful.’ ‘Oh, that’s it?’ says I. ‘Then it’ll be shortened sail and extra careful watches on the Lucy till I meet Maurice, for I mustn’t lose any property of Miss Foster’s.’”
We rowed away from the Lucy Foster, and I supposed that was the end of it. But that night going on deck to take a last look at the stars before turning in, there was the skipper and Clancy walking the break and talking.
“And did you know, Tommie, that Miss Foster owned any of this one?” the skipper was saying.
“No,” said Tommie, “I didn’t know, but–––”
“But you suspected. Well, I didn’t even suspect. And there’s that seine we lost last night––cost all of eight hundred dollars.”
“That’s what it did––a fine seine.”