Maid of the Mist

by John Oxenham

But there was nothing in it that Wulfrey could openly take exception to. Even a cat may look at a queen. The look in the mate's black eyes was akin to that with which the cat favours the canary, when he licks his lips below its cage;—if he only dared!

Still, they were free of him during the day, and the discomfort of him at other times but drew them closer together. But Wulfrey, watching the man cautiously, saw in him signs and symptoms that he did not like, which bade him be prepared for a possible change for the worse in their relationship.

For one thing, he was drinking more heavily than he had ever done since they landed, and the drink and the brooding of his black thoughts might well hatch out unexpected evil to one or other of them. As he lay there of a night, smoking and drinking, with a face of gloom and smouldering fires in his eyes, he was more than ever like a sleeping volcano which might burst forth in flame and fury at any moment.

But for the lurking possibilities of trouble, the cool way in which he devoted himself to his own private concerns, and left them to attend to all the irksome little details of the common life, would have had in it something of the humorous.

Miss Drummond was indignant and was for leaving him supperless when he came home of a night.

But Wulfrey rigorously repressed his strong fellow-feeling therewith, and determined that no provocation should come from their side. So they continued to make ample provision for all, and the mate helped himself as if by right. If, however, good-feeling on the part of the maker has anything to do with the compounding of cakes, as The Girl averred, those she made for the mate must surely have lacked flavour, for her views on the matter were most uncompromisingly expressed, both by hands and tongue, as she made them.

"Does he look upon us as his servants, then?"—with a contemptuous slap at the innocent dough.—"To do all his work without so much as a 'Thank you'?"—another vicious slap. "—And to be glowered at as if one were a rabbit that he wanted to devour!"—cakes pitched disdainfully into a corner till the time came to cook them.—"No!—for me, I wish he would stop out there among his skeletons and trouble us no more."

Her little tantrums at thought of Macro gave Wulfrey no little amusement. The vivacity of her manner as she delivered herself, blended as it was of Scottish frankness and French sparkle, made her altogether charming. He soothed her ruffled feelings, however, by his own eulogistic appreciation of the cakes she provided for their own use, and it was then that she explained to him how intimately the character of a cake is associated with the feelings of its maker.

Matters came to a head a few days later, when the commissariat department began to run low in certain essentials.

"We're almost out of flour and pork, Macro," Wulfrey said to him, as the mate was preparing to set off as usual one morning. "Will you bring some back with you?"