“Well, I didn't know. The way the cap'n was talkin' when you was havin' dinner, I thought—oh, that reminds me,” addressing the horror stricken Daniel, “Sam was in just now and wanted you to come right out to the store. Ezra Taylor's there and he wants another pair of them checkered overalls, same as he had afore.”
That evening when, having closed the Metropolitan Store at an early hour, the captain and his wife were on their way to the lodge meeting, Daniel voiced a feeling of perplexity which had disturbed his mind ever since the Blacks' call.
“Say, Serena,” he asked, “ain't you and Barney Black's wife friends any more?”
“Why, of course we're friends. What a question that is.”
“Humph! didn't seem to me you acted much like friends this afternoon. Slappin' each other back and forth—”
“Slappin' each other! Have you lost your brains altogether? What DO you mean?”
“I don't mean slappin' each other side of the head. 'Tain't likely I meant that. But the way you talked to each other—and the way you looked. And when 'twa'n't her it was me. She as much as asked you four or five times who it was that had died and you wouldn't tell, so, of course, I supposed you didn't want to. And yet, when she asked me and I was backin' and fillin', tryin' to get off the shoals, you barked out why didn't I 'answer her'? That may be sense, but I don't see it, myself.”
Serena laughed and squeezed his arm with her own.
“Did I bark?” she asked. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean to. But it did make me cross to have her come sailing in, in that high and mighty way—”
“It's the same way she always sails. I never saw her when she didn't act as if she was the only clipper in the channel and small craft better get out from under her bows.”