"Cap'n Kendrick," she asked, "how do you think Judge Knowles came to appoint you to be manager here at the Harbor?"
He was taken by surprise, of course. "Why," he stammered, "I—why, I don't know. That is, all I know about it is what he told me. He said he felt he ought to have some one, and I was near at home, and—and so he thought of me, I suppose."
"Yes, I know. You told me that.... But—but how did he know you wanted the position?"
"Wanted it? Good heavens and earth, I didn't want it! I fought as hard as I could not to take it. Why, I told you—you remember, that day when I first came over here; that time when Elvira and the rest wanted to buy the cast-iron menagerie; I told you then——"
"Yes," she interrupted again. "Yes, I know you did. But.... And the judge had never heard from you—had never...."
"Heard from me! Do you mean had I sent in an application for the job?"
"Oh, no, no! Not that. But you and he had never been—er—close friends in the old days, when you were here before?"
He could not guess what she was driving at. "Look here, Elizabeth," he said, "I've told you that I scarcely knew Judge Knowles before he sent for me and offered me this place. No man alive was ever more surprised than I was then. Why, I gathered that the judge had talked about me to you before he sent for me. Not as manager here, of course, but as—well, as a man. He told you that I was goin' to call, you said so, and I know you and he had talked and laughed together about my fight with the hens in Judah's garden."
The trouble, whatever its cause, seemed to vanish. She smiled. "Yes, yes," she said. "Of course we had. He did like you, Judge Knowles did, and that was all—of course it was."
"All what?"