At length the ship's company stopped for lack of breath; and in a moment of hush a voice cried: "You better get out of that traveling suit, Hat Tyler. You won't travel to-day."
It was Pearl Higgins. She followed up her witty saying by a peal of jeering laughter, which punctured the tense mood of that great throng of friends and neighbors; and such a roar of laughter went up at Hat's expense that the Minnie Williams—and Hat no less—quivered from stem to stern.
The sea captain burst frankly into tears.
"No, sir," Elmer said to a member of the Tall Stove Club who had missed the launching, "I never see Hat go all to pieces the way she did then. She was all broken up over it. Well, she might have mistrusted that Pearl had a bone to pick with her. Pearl had been between a sweat and a shiver to get in a word, and she see her chance and let her have it slap. 'T was just what the doctor ordered. It come in so kind of comical too. There was Hat, all twittered up in that great poison-green hat of hers with the little heap of crab apples over one eye—and she stood there and couldn't say ay, yes or no. And then it was boo-hoo, you know, same as women will when a thing ain't jest according to their liking. Hat's a smart woman, all right enough, but she don't show to her best advantage when she blubbers. I stood there looking at her and I couldn't think of nothing but that old adage that runs: 'Hell is nothing to put alongside of a woman that has been laughed at.' 'Pearl,' I says, 'you've done it now. You can't tell me you haven't made an enemy of that woman.' And Pearl says to me, 'That great baby! I guess she'll survive.' 'Well,' I says, 'the fat's in the fire.' And Pearl says to me, ''T won't hurt her if she does lose a little flesh over it.' I don't know why it is these women can't live together in peace without kicking up such a touse all the time over trifles."
Elmer was not free on the occasion itself to spend himself in narrative, however. His wife kept him close by her after her triumph. In grim silence she preceded him up the outside staircase, threw open the door to the house of Higgins and marched in. She commanded him to fetch a hod of coal. She rattled her irons, touched her finger to the bottom of a hot one—tszt—and brought it down on the ironing board with a masterful jounce. And then she glared out of the window at the massive stern of the Minnie Williams.
"I guess she'll know better another time," she said grimly.
"Ain't you two women been at swords' points long enough?" pleaded Elmer.
"If she thinks she can walk all over me she'll find she's mightily mistaken."
"All is, I mistrust she won't leave a stone unturned," Elmer said, scratching his ear. He was deep in the study of navigation again. "Hat's contrary; yes, she is; she's mulish when she's crossed. And I don't know when I've seen her get her back up the way she did to-day."
He spoke as briefly as possible on the subject, however. Good navigation began at home; and there were shallows there that would put to shame the terrors of Pollock Rip Slue. As he was going to bed near the hour of midnight he did just say that he would rather not have Hat Tyler for an enemy.