“I don’t know as it is any of my business, but it is some of your’n. You know there have been stories round about that boy, Walter—”
“Yes, Joe, and I don’t believe them. I told him about them, and he wanted to know who said so, and I had to give your name. He is dreadful anxious to see you, and if you have any proof, I advise you to be ready to bring it on.”
“Proof!” said Joe sneeringly, flashing a spark of hate out of his usually dull, sleepy black eyes. “What was last night but proof?”
“Last night? Why, it was an awful tough night, and the feller stumbled. Did you never fall? Cook Charlie said it was done in the discharge of duty, so he gethered, that Walter might have avoided the place, but if he had, he would have lost sight of the ocean, and not bein’ so well used to the place as some of the rest of us, he did not succeed in keepin’ his footin’.”
“Keepin’ his footin’!” was Joe’s contemptuous reply. “Look here! What would you say if I told you the boy was under the influence of liquor when I found him. I s’pose he took suthin’—it bein’ a cold night—and he took too much; but you don’t want the men to do that.”
“Neither too much nor too little. I don’t want them to touch it at all. There is plenty of hot coffee. That will brace ’em up and warm ’em up. Do you mean to say that you have positive proof that Walter had been a–foolin’ with drink?”
“He acted jest like it.”
“But he was hurt, and very nat’rally was confused.”
“S’posin’ I should say I saw a bottle stickin’ out of his pockets, when he was undressin’?”
“You did?”