“We understood it all then, leastways the married ones among us did. She’d shipped aboard partly to be with Bill and partly to keep an eye on ’im, and Tom Baker’s mistake about a prizefighter had just suited her book better than anything. How Bill was to get ’er home ’e couldn’t think, but it ’appened the second officer had been peeping down the fo’c’s’le, waiting for ever so long for a suitable opportunity to stop the fight, and the old man was so tickled about the way we’d all been done ’e gave ’er a passage back as stewardess to look arter the ship’s cat.”
THE RESURRECTION OF MR. WIGGETT
Mr. Sol Ketchmaid, landlord of the Ship, sat in his snug bar, rising occasionally from his seat by the taps to minister to the wants of the customers who shared this pleasant retreat with him.
Forty years at sea before the mast had made Mr. Ketchmaid an authority on affairs maritime; five years in command of the Ship Inn, with the nearest other licensed house five miles off, had made him an autocrat.
From his cushioned Windsor-chair he listened pompously to the conversation. Sometimes he joined in and took sides, and on these occasions it was a foregone conclusion that the side he espoused would win. No matter how reasonable the opponent’s argument or how gross his personalities, Mr. Ketchmaid, in his capacity of host, had one unfailing rejoinder—the man was drunk. When Mr. Ketchmaid had pronounced that opinion the argument was at an end. A nervousness about his license—conspicuous at other times by its absence—would suddenly possess him, and, opening the little wicket which gave admission to the bar, he would order the offender in scathing terms to withdraw.
Twice recently had he found occasion to warn Mr. Ned Clark, the village shoemaker, the strength of whose head had been a boast in the village for many years. On the third occasion the indignant shoemaker was interrupted in the middle of an impassioned harangue on free speech and bundled into the road by the ostler. After this nobody was safe.
To-night Mr. Ketchmaid, meeting his eye as he entered the bar, nodded curtly. The shoemaker had stayed away three days as a protest, and the landlord was naturally indignant at such contumacy.
“Good evening, Mr. Ketchmaid,” said the shoemaker, screwing up his little black eyes; “just give me a small bottle o’ lemonade, if you please.”
Mr. Clark’s cronies laughed, and Mr. Ketchmaid, after glancing at him to make sure that he was in earnest, served him in silence.
“There’s one thing about lemonade,” said the shoemaker, as he sipped it gingerly; “nobody could say you was drunk, not if you drank bucketsful of it.”