The captain looked at her for a moment. Then his lip twitched.
"No, ma'am," he said, solemnly, "I didn't come with that idea—but—"
"But? What do you mean by 'but'?"
"But I didn't realize what there was in here to run off with. If I had.... There, I guess I'd better go. Good day, ladies. Sorry I troubled you."
He lifted his cap, turned, and limped out of sight around the clump of lilacs. From behind him came a series of indignant gasps and exclamations.
"Why—why—Well, I never in all my born days! The saucy, impudent—"
And the voice of the moon-faced one raised in bewildered entreaty:
"What was it? What did he say? Elviry Snowden, why don't you tell me what 'twas he said?"
Captain Kendrick hobbled back to the Minot yard. He hobbled through the orchard gate, leaving it ajar, and reaching the bench beneath the locust tree, collapsed upon it. For some time he was conscious of very little except the ache in his legs and the fact that breathing was a difficult and jerky operation. Then, as the fatigue and pain ceased to be as insistent, the memory of his interview with the pair in the Eyrie returned to him and he began to chuckle. After a time he fancied that he heard a sympathetic chuckle behind him. It seemed to come from the vegetable garden, Judah's garden, which, so Mr. Cahoon told his former skipper, he had set out himself and was "sproutin' and comin' up better'n ary other garden in the town of Bayport, if I do say it as shouldn't."
Kendrick could not imagine who could be chuckling in that garden. Also he could not imagine where the chuckler could be hiding, unless it was behind the rows of raspberry and currant bushes. Slowly and painfully he rose to his feet and peered over the bushes. Then the mystery was explained. The "chuckles" were clucks. A flock of at least a dozen healthy and energetic hens were enthusiastically busy in the Cahoon beds. Their feet were moving like miniature steam shovels and showers of earth and infant vegetables were moving likewise. Judah had boasted that the fruits of his planting were "comin' up." If he had seen them at that moment he would have realized how fast they were coming up.