“Pop—Pop, you got fight on your mind an’ it’s just the way Inspector Jones warned you not to go to see Mr. Flint! Besides, it ain’t gonna be half bad here till we can think up sumpin’ else to do. Forget about Mr. Flint if you’re jus’ thinkin’ of him on accounta me. I’ll be all right——”
“I’ll forget anythin’ ’ceptin’ that Ol’ Flint’s cheated me with a grin on his slick face,” said Toby Dare with an ominous softness in his voice. “So I’m a-goin’ ter teach him a lesson, Skippy—I’m a-goin’ ter teach him that Toby Dare can’t be cheated outa everythin’ he’s hoped fer, fer years, without hittin’ back. Yessir, Ol’ Flint’s gotta learn what it means ter cheat me!”
“Pop—Pop! You ain’t goin’—honest?”
“I am. I’m a-goin’ sure as guns.”
“When—when you goin’, Pop?”
“Tonight!”
CHAPTER IV
COMPROMISE
Skippy got the first meal aboard the Minnie M. Baxter. His heart and soul were certainly not in the task for he burned four of the flapjacks that he was cooking. The coffee had twice boiled over and the narrow little cabin was filled with a blue, acrid smoke and though the sight of his father’s lugubrious face, as he paced up and down outside the little windows, disturbed him, he was not particularly unhappy.
His mind, during the preparation of that meal, was not on his father’s misfortunes nor on the threatened and ominous visit to the Flint yacht that very evening. Instead he was visualizing what benefits were to be derived from residing in the Basin, chief among these being an uninterrupted summer season of fishing and swimming. That to the heart of a boy of his age compensated fully for the loss of the garbage and ashes contract, yes, even for the loss of the barge’s promise of a remunerative future.
It is not to be thought that Skippy did not deeply feel his father’s grief, for indeed he had brooded over it for hours. But after they had settled and arranged their few belongings in the meagerly furnished cabin of the barge, he had achieved that blessed miracle of youth and accepted the inevitable without a question. Life stretched out ahead of him as the inlet lay spread under this starlit night, broken now and then by a quiet ripple until it reached the river. What would happen beyond that point he knew he could find out when he came to it.