"Fourteen dollars!—call it twenty. I'll pay you twenty dollars a week if you'll set me such a table as I describe. Mind, no scrimping, and no setting before me dishes that ain't for the rest of the family, to make me feel mean. And you've got to have enough for me to bring a friend in any time I choose. And any day you don't suit me, I'll clear out to the hotel. I am going down there now to get my dinner, and you can spend the afternoon laying in supplies," and, holding both hands over his mouth, he rushed from the room.
He left his cousin standing in the middle of the floor, a prey to resentful suspicion. Her eye fell on Derrice's half-eaten jam roll, and she was just muttering, "I believe that girl is at the bottom of it," when the girl herself stood before her.
"Is Captain White ill?" she asked, in concern.
"No; he is fussing about his food. Did he say anything to you about it?"
"No," replied Derrice, calmly, and going back to the parlour she watched the lean ex-sailor rolling down the street in a more eccentric fashion than usual.
He was choking and swaying with laughter. "I'm giving her something to do besides attending divine service and bullying her daughter-in-law. She'll have to stay at home and cook. Hippolyta Prymmer, you'll find me most as hard as your other master, the devil," and, trying to suppress his hilarious amusement, he entered the hotel, where he presently had a door full of waiters gazing at him over each others' shoulders in astonishment at the celerity with which he cleared one dish after another of those set before him.
Justin, meanwhile, was having another kind of experience. The big brick building to which he turned his steps was down by the river bank. All through the town the river was bordered by a massive stone wall, upon which many of the principal stores and offices were founded.
From the windows of the cashier's room one looked directly on the river, and into this room Justin had entered upon arriving at the scene of his daily occupation. He was standing engaged in conversation with his assistant when a sudden shriek outside caused them both to hurry to the window.
A child had fallen from a house near by on one of the large cakes of ice whirling about the narrow channel. Her position was dangerous, for she was too small to understand the directions shouted to her to throw herself flat on her face and cling to the ice until an attempt could be made to rescue her. Instead of heeding the warning voices, she extended her little arms toward her agonised mother, while her pitiful cries caused tears to spring to the eyes of every one who saw her.
The ice-cake on which she sustained her precarious footing swung under the bank window. Justin looked down at the light head so strangely like Derrice's, then, without a word, he lowered himself cautiously, and dropped in the clear streak of water next the wall. Making a few strokes he succeeded in catching hold of the mass of ice and in inducing the small child to sit down.