“All right,” the merchant responded, giving the call for the wareroom office (it was a private line); “you’ll find a whisk broom in that wardrobe there. Don can brush you.”
The sailor arose and walked over to the wardrobe.
“Dem the thing! how it sticks,” he remarked impatiently, tugging at the handle.
Then he exerted his great strength and the door flew open with surprising suddenness, and with it, to the startled amazement of the entire party, came the red haired clerk, Alfred Weeks, clinging vainly to the inner knob.
The momentum of his exit fairly threw him across the small room, where he dropped into a chair which happened to stand handy, gazing, the picture of fright, at the infuriated sailor.
CHAPTER XVIII
BRANDON LISTENS TO A SHORT FAMILY HISTORY
“Weeks! Weeks! I wouldn’t have thought it of you,” exclaimed Adoniram Pepper sorrowfully, turning away from the ’phone to gaze sternly at the rascally clerk.
“Wouldn’t have thought it of him?” roared Caleb. “’Doniram, you’re a fool! It’s just exactly what you might have expected of him. Oh, you—you swab, you!” he added, shaking his fist at the trembling culprit. “I wish I had you aboard ship. If I wouldn’t haze you!”
Then he sprang at the fellow, and seizing him ere he could escape, tossed him face downward over his knee, and, while he held him with one hand, delivered a most energetic spanking with the other huge palm, to his squirming prisoner’s manifest discomfort.
“Oh! oh! oh!” roared Weeks, almost black in the face. “Oh, he’s a-murderin’ me I Let me go! Oh! oh!”