“The doctor ordered it. You heard him yourself, grandfather.”
“Well, that's true, too,” said Cæsar.
The young man closed his long note-book and backed into a throng of women who had come up to the porch. “Of course, if you say so, Capt'n Quilliam——”
“I do say so,” shouted Pete; and the reporter disappeared.
The voices of two women came from the gulf of white faces wherein the reporter had been swallowed up. “I'm right glad it's lies they've been telling of her, Capt'n,” said the first.
“Of coorse you are, Mistress Kinnish,” shouted Pete.
“I could never have believed the like of the same woman, and I always knew the child was brought up by hand,” said the other.
“Coorse you couldn't, Mistress Kewley,” Pete replied.
But he swung up and kicked the door to in their faces. The strangers being shut out, Cæsar said cautiously—
“Do you mane that, Peter?”