"No, nor nobody else knows. I'd like to work in that store for him for
about ten minutes. I think I'd make him say something in that ten
minutes that would give me a good excuse for heaving him out the
window. He had an argument with Maurice, Wesley, and Maurice don't
know what it was half about, but he knows he came near to punching
Withrow."
And Wesley and Tommie had to talk that out; and between the pair of
them, thinking of what they said, I thought I ought to walk back to
the store with barely a civil look for my employer, who didn't like
that at all, for he generally wanted to hand out the black looks
himself.
Then the girls--my cousin Nellie and her particular chum, Alice
Foster--came in to weigh themselves, and also to remind me, they said,
that I was to take them over to Essex the next day for the launching
of the new vessel for the Duncan firm, which had been designed by a
friend of Nell's, a young fellow named Will Somers, who was just
beginning to get a name in Gloucester for fast and able models of
vessels. Withrow, who was not over-liberal with his holidays, said I
might go--mostly, I suspect, because Alice Foster had said she would
not make the trip without Nell, and Nell would not go unless I went
too.
Then Nell and Miss Foster went on with the business of weighing
themselves. That was in line with the latest fad. It was always
something or other, and physical culture was in the air at this time
with every other girl in Gloucester, so far as I could see--either
Indian-club swinging or dumb-bell drilling, long walks, and things of
that kind, and telling how much better they felt after it. My cousin
Nell, who went in for anything that anybody ever told her about, was
trying to reduce her weight. According to some perfect-form charts, or
something or other on printed sheets, she weighed seven pounds more
than she should for her height. I thought she was about the right
weight myself, and told her so, but she said no--she was positively
fat. "Look at Alice," she said, "she's just the thing."
I looked at Alice--Miss Foster I always called her myself--and
certainly she was a lovely girl, though perhaps a little too conscious
of it. She was one of the few that weren't going in for anything that
I could see. She wasn't even weighing herself, or at least she didn't
until Mr. Withrow, with his company manners in fine working order,
asked her if she wouldn't allow him to weigh her.
There were people in town who said it was not for nothing that
Alice Foster was so chummy with my cousin Nell. They meant, of
course, that being chummy with Nell, who came down regularly to see
me, gave herself a good excuse to come along and so have a word with
Withrow. Fred Withrow himself was a big, well-built, handsome
man--an unusually good-looking man, I'd call him--and a great
heart-breaker, according to report--some of it his own. And he was
wealthy, too. I did not know, but somehow or other I did not believe
it, or maybe it was that I hoped rather than believed that Miss
Foster did not care particularly for him; for I did not like him
myself, although I worked for him and was taking his money. Being day
in and day out with him in the store, you see I saw him pretty much
as he really was, and I hated to think of a fine girl--for with
all her cool ways I knew Miss Foster was that--marrying him. Just
how Withrow thought he stood with Miss Foster I did not know--he
was a pretty close-mouthed man when he wanted to be. Miss Foster
herself was that reserved kind of a girl that you cannot always
place. She struck me as being a girl that would die before she would
confess a weakness or a troublesome feeling. And yet, without
knowing how it came there, there was always a notion in the back of
my head that made me half-believe that she did not come to the
store with my cousin out of pure companionship. There was something
besides--and what could it be but Withrow?
After the weighing was done Nell asked me all at once, "I hear, Joe,
that Captain Hollis is going to have your new vessel? How is that?
We--I thought that Captain Blake was going master of her--and such a
pretty vessel!"
I answered that I didn't know how it was, and looked over at my
employer, as much as to say, "Maybe he can tell you."
I think now that I must have been a pretty impudent lad, letting my
employer know what I thought of him as I did in those days. I think,
too, he had a pretty shrewd notion of what I thought of himself and
Maurice Blake. At any rate, after the girls had gone, he worked
himself into a fine bit of temper, and I talked back at him, and the
end of it was that he discharged me--or 1 quit--I'm not sure which. I
do know that it was rapid-fire talk while it lasted.
It was some satisfaction to me to tell Withrow just about what I did
think of him before I went. He didn't quite throw me out of the door,
although he was big enough for that; but he looked as if he wanted to.
And maybe he would have, too, or tried it, only I said, "Mind I don't
give you what Tommie Clancy threatened to give you once," and his
nerve went flat. I couldn't have handled him as Clancy had any more
than I could have hove a barrel of salt mackerel over my head, which
was what the strong fishermen of the port were doing about that time
to prove their strength; but the bluff went, and I couldn't help
throwing out my chest as I went out the door and thinking that I was
getting to be a great judge of human nature.