“I can’t understand it,” he said at length. “My mind’s a perfect blank.”
“A perfect blank,” said Mrs. Bradd, cheerfully. It might have been accident, but she tapped her pocket as she spoke, and the outwitted mate bit his lip as he realised his blunder, and turned to the door. The couple watched him as he slowly passed up the street.
“It’s most extraordinary,” said the skipper; “the most extraordinary case I ever heard of.”
“So it is,” said his wife, “and what’s more extraordinary still for you, Ben, you’re going to church on Sunday, and what’s more extraordinary even than that, you are going to put two golden sovereigns in the plate.”
TWIN SPIRITS
The “Terrace,” consisting of eight gaunt houses, faced the sea, while the back rooms commanded a view of the ancient little town some half mile distant. The beach, a waste of shingle, was desolate and bare except for a ruined bathing machine and a few pieces of linen drying in the winter sunshine. In the offing tiny steamers left a trail of smoke, while sailing-craft, their canvas glistening in the sun, slowly melted from the sight. On all these things the “Terrace” turned a stolid eye, and, counting up its gains of the previous season, wondered whether it could hold on to the next. It was a discontented “Terrace,” and had become prematurely soured by a Board which refused them a pier, a band-stand, and illuminated gardens.
From the front windows of the third storey of No. 1 Mrs. Cox, gazing out to sea, sighed softly.
The season had been a bad one, and Mr. Cox had been even more troublesome than usual owing to tightness in the money market and the avowed preference of local publicans for cash transactions to assets in chalk and slate. In Mr. Cox’s memory there never had been such a drought, and his crop of patience was nearly exhausted.
He had in his earlier days attempted to do a little work, but his health had suffered so much that his wife had become alarmed for his safety. Work invariably brought on a cough, and as he came from a family whose lungs had formed the staple conversation of their lives, he had been compelled to abandon it, and at last it came to be understood that if he would only consent to amuse himself, and not get into trouble, nothing more would be expected of him. It was not much of a life for a man of spirit, and at times it became so unbearable that Mr. Cox would disappear for days together in search of work, returning unsuccessful after many days with nerves shattered in the pursuit.
Mrs. Cox’s meditations were disturbed by a knock at the front door, and, the servants having been discharged for the season, she hurried downstairs to open it, not without a hope of belated lodgers—invalids in search of an east wind. A stout, middle-aged woman in widow’s weeds stood on the door-step.