WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY
"I do not see how you can endure it, Louise! He is impossible--quite
impossible! I never knew your tastes were low!"
Critical to the tips of her trembling fingers, Aunt Euphemia sat stiffly
upright in Louise's bedroom rocking chair and uttered this harsh
reflection upon her niece's good taste. Louise never remembered having
seen her aunt so angry before. But she was provoked herself, and her
determination to go her own way and spend her summer as she chose
stiffened under the lash of the lady's criticism.
"What will our friends think of you?" demanded Mrs. Conroth. "I am
horrified to have them know you ever remained overnight in such a place.
There are the Perritons. They were on the train with me coming down from
Boston. They are opening their house here at what they call The
Beaches--one of the most exclusive colonies on the coast, I understand.
They insisted upon my coming there at once, and I have promised to bring
you with me."
"You have promised more than you can perform. Aunt Euphemia," Louise
replied shortly. "I will remain here."
"Louise!"
"I will remain here with Cap'n Amazon. And with Uncle Abram when he
returns. They are both dear old men----"
"That awful looking pirate!" gasped Mrs. Conroth.
"You do not know him," returned the girl. "You do not know how worthy
and now kind he is."
"You have only known him a week yourself," remarked Aunt Euphemia. "What
can a young girl like you know about these awful creatures--fishermen,
sailors, and the like? How can you judge?"
Louise laughed. "Why, Auntie, you know I have seen much of the world and
many more people than you have. And if I have not learned to judge those
I meet by this time I shall never learn, though I grow to be as old
as"--she came near saying "as you are," but substituted instead--"as Mrs.
Methuselah. I shall remain here. I would not insult Cap'n Amazon or
Cap'n Abe, by leaving abruptly and going with you to the Perritons'
bungalow."
"But what shall I say to them?" wailed Aunt Euphemia.
"What have you already said?"
"I said I expected you were waiting for me at Cardhaven. I would not
come over from Paulmouth in their car, but hurried on ahead. I wished to
save you the disgrace--yes, _disgrace_!--of being found here in
this--this country store. Ugh!" She shuddered again.
"I am determined that they shall not know your poor, dear father
unfortunately married beneath him."
"Aunt Euphemia!" exclaimed Louise, her gray eyes flashing now. "Don't
say that. It offends me. Daddy-prof never considered my mother or her
people beneath his own station."
"Your father, Louise, is a fool!" was the lady's tart reply.
"As he is your brother as well as my father," Louise told her coldly, "I
presume you feel you have a right to call him what you please. But I
assure you, Aunt Euphemia, it does not please me to hear you do so."
"You are a very obstinate girl!"
"That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's
side of the family," the girl returned bluntly.
"I shall be shamed to death! I must accept the Perritons' invitation. I
already have accepted it. They will think you a very queer girl, to say
the least."
"I am," her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was
soon over her wrath. "Even daddy-prof says that."
"Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did. I only
wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise.
"No. I have begun to like my comfort too well," and now Louise laughed
outright. "A mark of oncoming age, perhaps."
"You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise."
Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a
single word; but she was too respectful to do so.
"I am determined to remain here," she repeated, "so you may as well take
it cheerfully, auntie. If you intend staying with the Perritons any
length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them. I
haven't come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you. But
I am settled here with Cap'n Amazon, and I am comfortable. So, why
should I make any change?"
"But in this common house! With that awful looking old sailor! And the
way he talks! The rough adventures he has experienced--and the way he
relates them!"
"Why, I think he is charming. And his stories are jolly fun. He tells
the most thrilling and interesting things! I have before heard people
tell about queer corners of the world--and been in some of them myself.
Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays. But
when Cap'n Amazon was young!" she sighed.
"You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the
South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it,
the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe. The
poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide
to kill and eat them, or merely marry them."
"Louise!" Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece. "You show
distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has
already contaminated your mind. You are positively vulgar!"
She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through
the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "with ev'ry stitch of
canvas drawin' and a bone in her teeth." Louise agreed about the
"bone"--she had given her Aunt Euphemia a hard one to gnaw on.
The girl followed Mrs. Conroth to the automobile and helped her in.
Cap'n Amazon came to the store door as politely as though he were seeing
an honored guest over the ship's side.
"Ask your A'nt 'Phemie to come again. Too bad she ain't satisfied to
jine us here. Plenty o' cabin room. But if she's aimin' to anchor near
by she'll be runnin' in frequent I cal'late. Good-day to ye, ma'am!"
Aunt Euphemia did not seem even to see him. She was also afflicted with
sudden deafness.
"Louise! I shall never forget this--never!" she declared haughtily, as
Willy Peebles started the car and it rumbled on down the Shell Road.
Unable to face Cap'n Amazon just then for several reasons, Louise did not
re-enter the store but strolled down to the sands. There was a skiff
drawn up above high-water mark and the hoop-backed figure of Washy Gallup
sat in it. He was mending a net. He nodded with friendliness to Louise,
his jaw working from side to side like a cow chewing her cud--and for the
same reason. Washy had no upper teeth left.
"How be you this fine day, miss?" the old fellow asked sociably. "It's
enough to put new marrer in old bones, this weather. Cold weather lays
me up same's any old hulk. An' I been used to work, I have, all my life.
Warn't none of 'em any better'n me in my day."
"You have done your share, I am sure, Mr. Gallup," the girl said, smiling
cheerfully down upon him. "Yours is the time for rest."
"Rest? How you talk!" exclaimed Washy. "A man ought to be able to aim
his own pollock and potaters, or else he might's well give up the ship.
I tell 'em if I was only back in my young days where I could do a full
day's work, I'd be satisfied."
Louise had turned up a fiddler with the toe of her boot. As the creature
scurried for sanctuary, Washy observed:
"Them's curious critters. All crabs is."
"I think they are curious," Louise agreed. "Like a cross-eyed man. Look
one way and run another."
"Surely--surely. Talk about a curiosity--the curiousest-osity I ever
see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around's a clam-bucket
and dangling gre't long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."'
Louise was thankful for this opportunity for laughter, for that
"curiousest-osity" was too much for her sense of the ludicrous.
Like almost every other man of any age that Louise had met about
Cardhaven--save Cap'n Abe himself--Washy had spent a good share of his
life in deep-bottomed craft. But he had never risen higher than petty
officer.
"Some men's born to serve afore the mast--or how'd we git sailors?"
observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man.
"Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!" His
trembling fingers knotted the twine dexterously. "Now, there's your
uncle."
"Uncle Amazon?" asked Louise.
"No, miss. Cap'n Abe, I mean. This here Am'zon Silt, 'tis plain to be
seen, has got more salt water than blood in _his_ veins. Cap'n Abe's a
nice feller--not much again him here where he's lived and kep' store for
twenty-odd year. 'Ceptin' his yarnin' 'bout his brother all the time.
But from the look of Cap'n Am'zon I wouldn't put past him anything that
Cap'n Abe says he's done--and more.
"But Abe himself, now, I'd never believed would trust himself on open
water."
"Yet," cried Louise, "he's shipped on a sailing vessel, Uncle Amazon
says. He's gone for a voyage."
"Ye-as. But _has_ he?" Washy retorted, his head on one side and his
rheumy old eyes looking up at her as sly as a ferret's.
"What do you mean?"
"We none of us--none of the neighbors, I mean--seen him go. As fur's we
know he didn't go away at all. We're only taking his brother's word for
it."
"Why, Mr. Gallup! You're quite as bad as Betty. One would think to hear
you and her talk that Cap'n Amazon was a fratricide."
"Huh?"
"That he had murdered his brother," explained the girl.
"That's fratter side, is it? Well, I don't take no stock in such
foolishness. Them's Bet Gallup's notions, Cap'n Am'zon's all right, to
_my_ way o' thinkin'. I was talkin' about Cap'n Abe."
"I do not understand you at all, then," said the puzzled girl.
"I see you don't just foller me," he replied patiently. "I ain't casting
no alligators at your Uncle Am'zon. It's Cap'n Abe. I doubt his goin'
to sea at all. I bet he never shipped aboard that craft his brother
tells about."
"Goodness! Why not?"
"'Cause he ain't a sea-goin' man. There's a few o' such amongst Cape
Codders. Us'ally they go away from the sea before they git found out,
though."
"'Found out?'" the girl repeated with exasperation. "Found out in
_what_?"
"That they're _scare't_ o' blue water," Washy said decidedly. "Nobody
'round here ever seen Cap'n Abe outside the Haven. He wouldn't no more
come down here, push this skiff afloat, and row out to deep water than
he'd go put his hand in a wild tiger's mouth--no, ma'am!"
"Why, isn't that very ridiculous?" Louise said, not at all pleased. "Of
course Cap'n Abe shipped on that boat just as Cap'n Amazon said he was
going to. Otherwise he would have been back--or we would have heard from
him."
"He did, hey?" responded Washy sharply, springing the surprise he had
been leading up to. "Then why didn't he take his chist with him? It's
come back to the Paulmouth depot, so Perry Baker says, it not being
claimed down to Boston."