“Humph! your eyes must be better than mine then. I can’t see anything in here. It’s darker than a nigger’s pocket. Suppose we turn on the glim.”
He struck a match as he said it. By its light he saw her face. The match burned down to his finger tips and then he extinguished it.
“I don’t know but the dark is just as good and more economical,” he observed. “No use of encouragin’ the graspin’ ile trust unless it’s necessary. Let’s you and me sit here in the dark and talk. No objection to talkin’ to your back country relation, have you?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Well, Caroline, I’m goin’ to talk plain again. You can order me to close my hatch any time you feel like it; that’s skipper’s privilege, and you’re boss of this craft, you know. Dearie, I just met Jim Pearson. He tells me he’s decided not to go on this Cape cruise of ours. He said you agreed with him ’twas best he shouldn’t go. Do you mind tellin’ me why?”
She did not answer. He waited a minute and then continued.
“Course, I know I ain’t got any real right to ask,” he went on; “but I think more of you and Jim than I do of anybody else, and so maybe you’ll excuse me. Have you and he had a fallin’ out?”
Still she was silent. He sighed. “Well,” he observed, “I see you have, and I don’t blame you for not wantin’ to talk about it. I’m awful sorry. I’d begun to hope that.... However, we’ll change the subject. Or we won’t talk at all, if you’d rather not.”
Another pause. Then she laid her hand on his.
“Uncle,” she said, “you know I always want to talk to you. And, as for the right to ask, you have the right to ask anything of me at any time. And I should have told you, of my own accord, by and by. Mr. Pearson and I have not quarreled; but I think—I think it best that I should not see him again.”