“Hey? Well, they would have been MY best ones, if I owned 'em, I tell you that. I never see such clothes as that woman has! All trimmin' and flounces and didos, and—”
“Hi! steady there, Zuba. Keep your eye on the compass. You're gettin' off the course again. Annette—Mrs. Black, I mean—came to see Mrs. Dott; that's plain sailin' so far. What happened after that?”
“Why, they went off together in the automobile and Serena said to tell you she had to go to lodge, and she'd be back when she could and not to wait supper. That's all I know.”
The captain finished his lonely meal and returned to the store, where he found Abel Blount's wife and their twin boys, aged eight, waiting to negotiate for rubber boots. The boots were for the boys, but Mrs. Blount did the buying and it was a long and talky process. At last, however, the youngsters were fitted and clumped proudly away, bearing their leather shoes in their hands. It was a dry evening, but to separate the twins from those rubber boots would have been next door to an impossibility.
“There!” exclaimed the lady, as she bade the captain good night, “that's done; that much is settled anyhow. I'm thankful I ain't got four twins, instead of two, Cap'n Dott.”
Daniel, entering the sale in the ledger, was thankful also. If the lengthy Blount account had been settled he would have been still more so.
At nine o'clock he and Sam locked up, extinguished the lamps, and closed the Metropolitan Store for the night. Crossing the yard to the house, which he entered by the front door, he found Serena in the sitting-room. She was reclining upon the couch. She was tired, and out of sorts.
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, acknowledging her husband's greeting with a nod, “I am just about worn out, Daniel.”
“I should think you would be, Serena. You've been makin' tracks between here and that lodge room all to-day and yesterday, too. I should think you'd be about dead.”
“It isn't that. I don't mind the work. It's the thanklessness of it all that breaks me down. I give my time and effort to help the lodge, and what does it amount to?”