“I’ll tell you, Richard, sometime when John is out of the way,” said Muriel, archly confidential. “No objections, John! We’ll spare your modesty, and satisfy Richard’s curiosity, and you are to know nothing about it.”
“And my curiosity, too,” said Emily, laughing.
“And yours too,” replied Muriel.
“Well, I must say that that was very noble in John,” said Wentworth. “But he’s always”—
“No nobler than you’re giving poor Vukovich house-room till he found another friend in Bagasse,” broke in Harrington, laughing and coloring.
“Peuh!” said Wentworth, blushing. “How did you find that out? No matter—he was only a Hungarian. But this poor fellow—oh, what an account for a man to have to give of himself! It actually made my blood boil.”
“By the way,” said Harrington, “we must try and discover the name of that captain, and have this piece of infamy properly made public. I can’t help fancying that Antony is wrong about the name of the brig. The brig Solomon. Isn’t Solomon an odd or unusual name for a vessel? Solomon—Solomon. But still—I don’t know; she may be named for her owner. I wonder who he is—for this rascality must have been known to him, and we must hold him responsible to the public for it, too.”
Muriel, who was abstractedly thinking, suddenly started, then closed her parted lips, and reflected again, with a painful color stealing over her countenance.
“John,” said she in a low voice, “an idea occurs to me. You remember that stevedore, Driscoll. Wasn’t it on a brig that he broke his leg?”
“Yes,” returned Harrington, wondering what she meant. “It was on one of your uncle’s vessels.”