CHAPTER VI
ICICLES AND DUST
Captain Cy did not reply to the request for the box. It is doubtful if he even heard it. Mrs. Oliver's astonishing letter had, as he afterwards said, left him “high and dry with no tug in sight.” Mary Thomas was dead, and her daughter, her DAUGHTER! of whose very existence he had been ignorant, had suddenly appeared from nowhere and been dropped at his door, like an out-of-season May basket, accompanied by the modest suggestion that he assume responsibility for her thereafter. No wonder the captain wiped his forehead in utter bewilderment.
“Don't you think you'd better send for the box?” repeated the child, shivering a little under the big coat.
“Hey? What say? Never mind, though. Just keep quiet for a spell, won't you. I want to let this soak in. By the big dipper! Of all the solid brass cheek that ever I run across, this beats the whole cargo! And Betsy Howes never hinted! 'Probably you would be glad to take—' Be GLAD! Why, blast their miserable, stingy—What do they take me for? I'LL show 'em! Indiana ain't so fur that I can't—Hey? Did you say anything, sis?”
The girl had shivered again. “No, sir,” she replied. “It was my teeth, I guess. They kind of rattled.”
“What? You ain't cold, are you? With all that round you and in front of that fire?”
“No, sir, I guess not. Only my back feels sort of funny, as if somebody kept dropping icicles down it. Those bushes and vines were so wet that when I tumbled down 'twas most like being in a pond.”
“Sho! sho! That won't do. Can't have you laid up on my hands. That would be worse than—Humph! Tut, tut! Somethin' ought to be done, and I'm blessed if I know what. And not a woman round the place—not even that Debby. Say, look here, what's your name—er—Emmie, hadn't I better get the doctor?”
The child looked frightened.