The Portygee Part 8

"Zelotes, won't you PLEASE go and ask her pardon?"

The captain pushed back his chair. "I'll be hanged if it ain't a healthy note," he grumbled, "when the skipper has to go and apologize to the cook because the cook's made a fool of herself! I'd like to know what kind of rum Labe drinks. I never saw any but his kind that would go to somebody else's head. Two people gettin' tight and only one of 'em drinkin' is somethin'--"

He disappeared into the kitchen, still muttering. Mrs. Snow smiled feebly at her grandson.

"I guess you think we're funny folks, Albert," she said. "But Rachel is one hired help in a thousand and she has to be treated just so."

Five minutes later Cap'n 'Lote returned. He shrugged his shoulders and sat down at his place.

"All right, Mother, all right," he observed. "I've been heavin' ile on the troubled waters and the sea's smoothin' down. She'll be kind and condescendin' enough to eat with us in a minute or so."

She was. She came into the dining-room with the air of a saint going to martyrdom and the remainder of the meal was eaten by the quartet almost in silence. When it was over the captain said:

"Well, Al, feel like walkin', do you?"

"Why, why, yes, sir, I guess so."

"Humph! You don't seem very wild at the prospect. Walkin' ain't much in your line, maybe. More used to autoin', perhaps?"

Mrs. Snow put in a word. "Don't talk so, Zelotes," she said. "He'll think you're makin' fun of him."

"Who? Me? Not a bit of it. Well, Al, do you want to walk down to the lumber yard with me?"

The boy hesitated. The quiet note of sarcasm in his grandfather's voice was making him furiously angry once more, just as it had done on the previous night.

"Do you want me to?" he asked, shortly.

"Why, yes, I cal'late I do."

Albert, without another word, walked to the hat-rack in the hall and began putting on his coat. Captain Lote watched him for a moment and then put on his own.

"We'll be back to dinner, Mother," he said. "Heave ahead, Al, if you're ready."

There was little conversation between the pair during the half mile walk to the office and yards of "Z. Snow and Co., Lumber and Builders'

Hardware." Only once did the captain offer a remark. That was just as they came out by the big posts at the entrance to the driveway. Then he said:

"Al, I don't want you to get the idea from what happened at the table just now--that foolishness about Rachel Ellis--that your grandmother ain't a sensible woman. She is, and there's no better one on earth.

Don't let that fact slip your mind."

Albert, somewhat startled by the abruptness of the observation, looked up in surprise. He found the gray eyes looking down at him.

"I noticed you lookin' at her," went on his grandfather, "as if you was kind of wonderin' whether to laugh at her or pity her. You needn't do either. She's kind-hearted and that makes her put up with Rachel's silliness. Then, besides, Rachel herself is common sense and practical nine-tenths of the time. It's always a good idea, son, to sail one v'yage along with a person before you decide whether to cla.s.s 'em as A.

B. or just roustabout."

The blood rushed to the boy's face. He felt guilty and the feeling made him angrier than ever.

"I don't see why," he burst out, indignantly, "you should say I was laughing at--at Mrs. Snow--"

"At your grandmother."

"Well--yes--at my grandmother. I don't see why you should say that. I wasn't."

"Wasn't you? Good! I'm glad of it. I wouldn't, anyhow. She's liable to be about the best friend you'll have in this world."

To Albert's mind flashed the addition: "Better than you, that means,"

but he kept it to himself.

The lumber yards were on a spur track not very far from the railway station where he had spent that miserable half hour the previous evening. The darkness then had prevented his seeing them. Not that he would have been greatly interested if he had seen them, nor was he more interested now, although his grandfather took him on a personally conducted tour between the piles of spruce and pine and hemlock and pointed out which was which and added further details. "Those are two by fours," he said. Or, "Those are larger joist, different sizes." "This is good, clear stock, as good a lot of white pine as we've got hold of for a long spell." He gave particulars concerning the "handiest way to drive a team" to one or the other of the piles. Albert found it rather boring.

He longed to speak concerning enormous lumber yards he had seen in New York or Chicago or elsewhere. He felt almost a pitying condescension toward this provincial grandparent who seemed to think his little piles of "two by fours" so important.

It was much the same, perhaps a little worse, when they entered the hardware shop and the office. The rows and rows of little drawers and boxes, each with samples of its contents--screws, or bolts, or hooks, or k.n.o.bs--affixed to its front, were even more boring than the lumber piles. There was a countryfied, middle-aged person in overalls sweeping out the shop and Captain Zelotes introduced him.

"Albert," he said, "this is Mr. Issachar Price, who works around the place here. Issy, let me make you acquainted with my grandson, Albert."

Mr. Price, looking over his spectacles, extended a h.o.r.n.y hand and observed: "Yus, yus. Pleased to meet you, Albert. I've heard tell of you."

Albert's private appraisal of "Issy" was that the latter was another funny Rube. Whatever Issy's estimate of his employer's grandson might have been, he, also, kept it to himself.

Captain Zelotes looked about the shop and glanced into the office.

"Humph!" he grunted. "No sign or symptoms of Laban this mornin', I presume likely?"

Issachar went on with his sweeping.

"Nary one," was his laconic reply.

"Humph! Heard anything about him?"

Mr. Price moistened his broom in a bucket of water. "I see Tim Kelley on my way down street," he said. "Tim said he run afoul of Laban along about ten last night. Said he cal'lated Labe was on his way. He was singin' 'Hyannis on the Cape' and so Tim figgered he'd got a pretty fair start already."

The captain shook his head. "Tut, tut, tut!" he muttered. "Well, that means I'll have to do office work for the next week or so. Humph! I declare it's too bad just now when I was countin' on him to--" He did not finish the sentence, but instead turned to his grandson and said: "Al, why don't you look around the hardware store here while I open the mail and the safe. If there's anything you see you don't understand Issy'll tell you about it."

He went into the office. Albert sauntered listlessly to the window and looked out. So far as not understanding anything in the shop was concerned he was quite willing to remain in ignorance. It did not interest him in the least. A moment later he felt a touch on his elbow.

He turned, to find Mr. Price standing beside him.

"I'm all ready to tell you about it now," volunteered the unsmiling Issy. "Sweepin's all finished up."

Albert was amused. "I guess I can get along," he said.

"Don't worry."

"_I_ ain't worried none. I don't believe in worryin'; worryin' don't do folks no good, the way I look at it. But long's Cap'n Lote wants me to tell you about the hardware I'd ruther do it now, than any time. Henry Cahoon's team'll be here for a load of lath in about ten minutes or so, and then I'll have to leave you. This here's the shelf where we keep the b.u.t.ts--hinges, you understand. Bra.s.s along here, and iron here. Got quite a stock, ain't we."

He took the visitor's arm in his mighty paw and led him from shelves to drawers and from drawers to boxes, talking all the time, so the boy thought, "like a catalogue." Albert tried gently to break away several times and yawned often, but yawns and hints were quite lost on his guide, who was intent only upon the business--and victim--in hand. At the window looking across toward the main road Albert paused longest.

There was a girl in sight--she looked, at that distance, as if she might be a rather pretty girl--and the young man was languidly interested.

He had recently made the discovery that pretty girls may be quite interesting; and, moreover, one or two of them whom he had met at the school dances--when the young ladies from the Misses Bradshaws' seminary had come over, duly guarded and chaperoned, to one-step and fox-trot with the young gentlemen of the school--one or two of these young ladies had intimated a certain interest in him. So the feminine possibility across the road attracted his notice--only slightly, of course; the sophisticated metropolitan notice is not easily aroused--but still, slightly.

"Come on, come on," urged Issachar Price. "I ain't begun to show ye the whole of it yet ... Eh? Oh, Lord, there comes Cahoon's team now! Well, I got to go. Show you the rest some other time. So long ... Eh? Cap'n Lote's callin' you, ain't he?"