“She’s a—she’s one of the river people, huh? Like you, Big Joe?” Skippy asked wondering.
“Like you and me, Skippy me boy,” answered Big Joe, nodding his head. “She’s one o’ our people, the kind what helps their own whin there’s trouble.”
Skippy shut his eyes to visualize the stern, cold visage of Marty Skinner. Hadn’t he talked of river people as if they were all of a kind? Hadn’t he said they were all crooks and criminals?
Big Joe had put him in that category of river people, he who had never disobeyed a law in his young life! He resented it and wanted to say so, but his better judgment prevailed against it and he decided to wait and see what kind of people these river people of Brown’s Basin really were. Certainly if they were all like Big Joe Tully, Skinner had much to learn.
It was the buxom Mrs. Duffy who decided it, some moments later. She came in like the fresh morning breeze from the inlet, clean-aproned and smiling, laden with soup and eggnog and a wealth of bright cretonne tucked under her generous arm.
“Cretonne curtains for thim little windows, bhoy,” she said breathlessly. “Mr. Tully give me the money for ’em an’ I made ’em up ’fore I come over. It’ll seem more like home to ye in Brown’s Basin whin ye see ’em from the outside. The inlet’s dismal enough, so ’tis, without starin’ at it through bare, dirty winders; ain’t I right, Mr. Tully?”
“Guess so,” Big Joe answered a little abashed. “Women folks know more about thim things, but even me, I be likin’ that bright stuff flutterin’ around a winder. Ye got the soup an’ everythin’?”
Mrs. Duffy’s smile was vast and it swept from Big Joe to the wan-looking Skippy.
“Ye’ll pick up, so ye will, or me and Mr. Tully’ll be to blame, Skippy,” she said heartily.
Skippy almost choked with gratitude. He tried to speak, but could only think that these were river people—his people! Big Joe, who was spending a lot of money so that his father might have another chance for freedom and who would spare no expense to nurse him back to health. And Mrs. Duffy, who was bringing cheer into the shanty of the Minnie M. Baxter and who seemed to care so much that he get well!