Meanwhile Mr. Tinneray, standing well aft, was calling cheerfully down to the little figure on the wharf.
"Next Summer you must git your nerve up and come along. Excursions is all the rage nowadays. My wife's took in four a'ready."
But little Mrs. Cronney did not answer. Shading her eyes from the sun glare, she was establishing recognizance with her cerulean relative who, waving a careless blue-mitted hand, called down in girlish greeting,
"Heigho, Hetty, how's Cronney? Why ain't you to the excursion?"
The little woman on the wharf was seen to wince slightly. She shifted her brown basket to the other arm, ignoring the second question.
"Oh, Cronney's good—ony he's low-spirited—seems as tho he couldn't get no work."
"Same old crooked stick, hey?" Mrs. Tuttle called down facetiously.
Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray stole horrified glances at each other. One planted a cotton-gloved hand over an opening mouth. But little Mrs. Cronney, standing alone on the pier was equal to the occasion. She shook out a small and spotless handkerchief, blowing her nose with elegant deliberation before she replied,
"Well—I don't know as he needs to work all the time; Cronney is peculiar, you know, he's one of them that is high-toned and nifty about money—he ain't like some, clutching onto every penny!"
By degrees, other excursionists, leaning over the railing, began to catch at something spicy in the situation of these two sisters brought face to face. At Mrs. Cronney's sally, one of the funny men guffawed his approval. Groups of excursionists explained to each other that that lady down there, her on the wharf, in the brown, was own sister to Mrs. Josiah Tuttle!