PARTNERS OF THE TIDE
[Illustration: “I never dreamed that I’d come to be skipper of a
coal-hod.”
Page 122. _Partners of the Tide._]
_Partners of the Tide_
_By_ JOSEPH C. LINCOLN
Author of “Cap’n Eri”
[Illustration]
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1905
BY
A. S. BARNES & CO.
_Published April, 1905_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ORHAM STAGE 1
II. THE “OLD MAIDS” 20
III. THE “DOG GIRL” 40
IV. THE “LAST DAY” 64
V. A CHANGE OF PLANS 86
VI. THE THOMAS DOANE 103
VII. A QUESTION OF POLICY 121
VIII. HOME AGAIN 148
IX. WRECKING AND WALTZING 169
X. THE LUMBER SCHOONER 193
XI. AT SETUCKIT POINT 210
XII. THE ANCHOR OF THE LIBERTY 228
XIII. MR. COOK WIRES 247
XIV. THE “SUBSCRIPTION BALL” 262
XV. THE DIVING BELLE 282
XVI. THE CAPTAIN’S GAMBLE 294
XVII. WORK AND WORRY 306
XVIII. MR. SAM HAMMOND 318
XIX. THE BURGLAR 329
XX. A DEBT IS PAID 347
XXI. “STORM ALONG, JOHN!” 363
XXII. THANKSGIVING 384
PARTNERS OF THE TIDE
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THE ORHAM STAGE.
“Was you cal’latin’ to buy one of them turnovers, bub?” casually
inquired Mr. Clark, ceasing to gaze at his steaming boots, which were
planted against the bulging centre of the station stove, and turning
toward the boy at the lunch counter.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy. He had taken off one worsted mitten and held
a five-cent piece clutched tightly in his red fist.
“I want to know!” exclaimed Mr. Clark, and then, bending forward, as
much as his girth would allow, to wink ’round the corner of the stove
at Mr. Bodkin, who sat opposite, he added: “Ain’t your ma ever learned
you to respect age?”
The boy made no reply to this question, but Mr. Bodkin slapped his
thigh and remarked that that was “a good one.”
“Them turnovers,” continued Mr. Clark, “was willed to this depot by the
man that used to drive the Ostable bake-cart. He’s dead now, and here
you be, figgerin’ to eat up his gravestone. Dear, dear! I don’t know
what this country’s comin’ to. Ike, gimme a match.”
Mr. Bodkin, after his laugh was over, produced a “card” of matches and
passed them to the humorist, who used one to relight the stump of his
cigar and put the remainder in his pocket. Then he returned to his
subject.
“Them turnovers----” he began, but was interrupted by the station
agent, who came out of the little room where the telegraph instrument
was clicking, and stepped behind the lunch counter. He looked at the
joker and his companion in anything but a friendly manner.
“Those turnovers,” said the station agent, “were fresh yesterday and
they’re good for somethin’, which is more than I can say about some
other fresh things around this depot jest now. Lon Clark, I’d like to
remind you that we use blackin’ on that stove, not terbacker juice.
Well, boy, what’ll you have?”
The boy, thus appealed to, held up his five-cent piece and said that he
should like one of the slandered “turnovers.”
“All right; which’ll it be--mince or apple?”
“If I was you,” suggested Mr. Clark, not yet completely crushed, “I’d
take the mince kind. You know what you’ll git if you take apple, but
baker’s mincemeat’s kind of a myst’ry. Might bite into a gold dollar,
like as not; hey, Ike?”
“Give me an apple one,” said the boy, decidedly.
The station agent wrapped the pastry in a piece of newspaper and handed
it to his customer. Then he came out from behind the counter and,
looking at Mr. Clark and his friend, sniffed suspiciously.
“Either of you fellers got your boots afire?” he asked, after a moment.
“Seems to me I smell somethin’ mean, like leather burnin’. Oh, excuse
me, Lon; I didn’t notice your cigar.” And, having unloaded this bit of
sarcasm, he returned to the telegraph instrument.
The boy, a youngster of about twelve years of age, with a freckled face
and a pair of bright gray eyes, took his “turnover” to the settee in
the corner of the waiting-room and began to eat. He had on a worn cloth
cap with an attachment that could be pulled down to cover the ears, and
a shabby overcoat of man’s size, very much too large for him. As he
munched the greasy crust and the thin layer of “evaporated” apple, he
looked around him with interest.
The station itself was like the average railway building on Cape
Cod. Except for the sign “Harniss” that hung outside, it might have
been the station at Wellmouth, which he had seen so often. Battered
settees around the walls; lithographs of steamers, time-tables and
year-old announcements of excursions and county fairs hung above them;
big stove set in a box of sawdust--all these were the regulation
fixtures. Regulation also were the “refreshments” on the counter at the
side--“turnovers” arranged cob-house fashion under a glass cover, with
a dingy “Washington” pie under another cover, and jars of striped stick
candy with boxes of “jawbreakers” and similar sweetmeats between.
It was snowing hard and, in the dusk of the winter evening, the flakes
rustled against the windows as if unseen old ladies in starched summer
gowns were shivering in the storm and crowding to get a peep within.
The air in the shut waiting-room smelt of hot stove, sawdust, wet
clothing and Mr. Clark’s cigar. To this collection of perfumes was
presently added the odor of kerosene as the station agent lit the big
lamps in their brackets on the wall.
From outside came the sounds of creaking wheels and stamping horses,
the stamping muffled by the snow which covered the ground. Also some
one, in a voice more vigorous than sweet, was heard to sing a chorus
of “Hi, randy, dandy--o!” Mr. Clark and his friend took their feet
down from the stove and looked expectantly toward the door, the former
remarking that “Barney was feelin’ gay to-night,” and that he “must
have a bottle of consolation along.”
The door opened and a big man, with a face of which gray whiskers and
red nose were the most prominent features, came stamping and puffing
into the room. He jerked off a pair of leather gloves, playfully shook
the congealed moisture from them down Mr. Clark’s neck inside his
collar, tossed a long whip into the corner, and, holding his spread
fingers over the stove, began to sing “Whoa, Emma!” with enthusiasm.
Mr. Clark being too busy clawing the melting snow from his neck to
open a conversation, Mr. Bodkin observed: “Hello, Barney! How’s the
trav’lin’? Have a rough time drivin’ over?”
“Oh, middlin’ middlin’,” replied the driver of the Orham stage,
unbuttoning his overcoat and reaching for his pipe; “but this earth’s
a vale of tears, anyhow, so what’s the odds so long’s you’re happy.
Hello, Dan!” The last a shouted greeting to the station agent in the
little room, whose answer was a wave of the hand and a sidelong nod
across the telegraph instrument.
“What’s doin’ over in Orham, Barney?” inquired Mr. Clark.
“Methodist folks are goin’ to start up temp’rance meetin’s; Seth
Wingate’s bought a new horse; and ‘Hungry’ Bill Samuels has got another
child--that’s the latest excitement jest about now. Not that ‘Hungry’
Bill’s baby was much of a surprise; you can gin’rally count on a new
Samuels every year. The temp’rance revival is the reel thing, though;
folks signin’ the pledge as if ’twas catchin’, like the measles.”
“You ain’t developed the symptoms yit, have you?” asked Mr. Clark, with
a laugh.
“No, not yit. Lucky I was vaccinated young. I ain’t takin’ no chances,
though; keep plenty of preventative in the house all the time;” and,
with a profound wink, Mr. Small began to hum, “Cold water, cold water;
oh, that is my song!”
“Oh, say!” he shouted, suddenly interrupting his own concert, “say,
Dan! there _is_ some more news, after all. Come out here a minute; I
want to tell you somethin’.”
The station agent turned his head in the speaker’s direction. “Go
ahead,” he said, “I can hear you.”
“Well, I thought you’d be interested, bein’ as you used to live in
Orham. Prissy and Tempy’s adopted a boy.”
The agent evidently was interested. “_What?_” he exclaimed.
“Prissy and Tempy’s took a boy to bring up. Oh, it’s a fact! It took me
some time to b’lieve it, myself, but it’s so.”
“The old maids?”
“Yup, the old maids. I s’pose they come to reelize that they needed a
man ’round the house, but as there wan’t no bids in that line, they
sort of compromised on a boy.”
“You don’t mean the Allen old maids that live down on the ‘lower
road,’ do you?” asked Mr. Bodkin.
“Sartin. I said _the_ old maids, didn’t I? There’s plenty of single
women in Orham, but when you say ‘the old maids’ in our town, everybody
knows you mean Prissy and Tempy.”
“I done a job for them once,” remarked Mr. Bodkin, reflectively. “I was
over to Orham sellin’ berries. I warn’t reelly lookin’ for no work, you
understand, but----”
“Yup, we understand,” said the stage driver, dryly. “It sort of reached
out and nabbed you ’fore you could git away.”
“That’s it,” assented Ike, oblivious to the sarcasm. “I called at
their place--it’s that big, old-fashioned house by John Baxter’s
cranb’ry swamp, Lon--and Miss Prissy Allen, she bought the last of my
huckleberries. Then she wanted to know if I wouldn’t mow the front
yard. We had some dicker ’bout the price, but I fin’lly agreed to do
it, so she showed me where the scythe was and I started in. And I swan
to man,” continued Mr. Bodkin, excitedly, “if she didn’t stand on the
front steps and watch me like a dog tryin’ to locate a flea, jumpin’
on me every minute or two to tell me that she thought I’d cut this
part ‘’most an inch shorter’n I had that part,’ and so on. Fin’lly I
got sick of her naggin’, and I says, jest to shame her, I says, ‘If
I’d known you was so partic’lar,’ I says, ‘I’d a-brought my sperrit
level along,’ I says. And says she, ‘There’s one that used to b’long
to father out in the barn.’ Well, sir! that was too much for _me_! ‘I
don’t mow grass by no sperrit level,’ says I, ‘and I tell you, I----’”
“What about the boy, Barney?” said the station agent, coming into the
waiting-room.
“Why,” said Mr. Small, “it’s this way; seems that Prissy and Tempy’s
father, old Cap’n D’rius Allen--he’s been dead six years or more
now--had a niece name of Sophia, that married Cap’n Ben Nickerson over
to Wellmouth. Cap’n Ben and his wife had one son; I think the boy’s
name’s Bradley. Anyhow, Cap’n Ben and his wife was drowned off the
Portuguese coast two years ago when Ben’s bark was lost; maybe you
remember? Well, the boy was left at home that voyage with Ben’s ha’f
brother, Solon Nickerson, so’s the youngster could go to school. When
his folks was drownded that way the boy kept on livin’ with Solon till,
’bout three weeks ago, Solon was took with pneumony and up and died.
Prissy and Tempy’s the only relations there was, you see, so it was
left to them to say what should be done with the boy. I cal’late there
must have been some high old pow-wowin’ in the old house, but the old
maids are pretty conscientious, spite of their bein’ so everlastin’
‘old maidy,’ and they fin’lly decided ’twas their duty to take the
little feller to bring up. That’s the way _I_ heard the yarn. They kept
it a secret until yesterday, but now the whole town’s talkin’ ’bout it.
You see, it’s such a good joke for them two to have a boy in the house.
Why, Prissy’s been used to shooin’ every stray boy off the place as if
he was a hen.”
Mr. Small laughed so heartily at this that the others joined in. When
the hilarity had subsided, the station agent asked:
“When’s the Nickerson boy comin’ over from Wellmouth?”
“Why, to-day, come to think of it. He was to come up on the afternoon
train from Wellmouth and go to Orham with me to-night. You ain’t seen
nothin’----”
The station agent interrupted him with a sidelong movement of the head.
“Huh?” queried Mr. Small. Then he, in company with Mr. Clark and Mr.
Bodkin, turned toward the corner of the waiting-room.
The boy who had bought the apple “turnover,” having finished the last
crumb of that viand, had turned to the window, and was looking out
through a hole he had scraped in the frost on the pane. He had shaded
his face with his hands to shut out the lamplight, and, though he must
have heard the conversation, his manner betrayed no interest in it.
Mr. Small interrogated the station agent by raising his eyebrows.
The agent whispered, “Shouldn’t wonder,” and added: “He came on the
up-train this afternoon.”
“Hey, boy!” said Mr. Clark, who never let consideration for other
people interfere with his own curiosity, “what’s your name?”
The boy turned from the window and, blinking a little as the light
struck his eyes, faced the group by the stove. His freckled cheeks
glistened as the light shone upon them, but, as if he knew this, he
pulled the big sleeve of the overcoat across his face and rubbed them
dry.
“What’s your name, sonny?” said the stage driver, kindly.
“Nickerson,” said the boy in a low tone.
“I want to know! Your fust name ain’t Bradley, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sho! well, there now! Guess you’re goin’ to ride over with me then. I
drive the Orham coach. Hum! well, I declare!” And Mr. Small pulled his
beard in an embarrassed fashion.
“Come over to the stove and get warm, won’t you?” asked the station
agent.
“I ain’t cold,” was the reply.
“Well, ain’t you hungry now?” said Barney, who was afraid that his
roughly told story had hurt the youngster’s feelings. “Won’t you have
somethin’ to eat? One of them turnovers or some Washington pie, or
somethin’, hey? Got a long ride ahead of you, you know.”
“He’s got outside of one turnover already,” said Clark, with a loud
laugh, “and that’s enough to last most folks for a consid’rable spell.
Haw! haw!”
“Shut up, Lon,” snapped the stage driver. “What d’you say, son?
Somethin’ to eat?”
“I ain’t hungry, thank you,” said the boy, and turned to the window
again.
The trio by the stove fidgeted in silence for a few moments, and then
Mr. Small said, uneasily: “Ain’t it ’most time for that train to be
in? She’s a ha’f hour late now.”
“She was twenty-five minutes late at Sandwich,” said the station agent,
“and she’s prob’ly lost ten minutes or so since then. She’ll be along
in a little while now.”
But in spite of this cheerful prophecy a full fifteen minutes passed
before the train, which had been started from Boston with the vague
idea that, some time or other, it might get to Provincetown, came
coughing and panting ’round the curve and drew up at the station
platform. Car roofs and sides, and tender and locomotive were plastered
thick with snow, and the empty seats seen through the doors as the
trainmen emerged, showed that travel for this night was very light
indeed. In fact, only one passenger got out at the Harniss station, and
he, stopping for a moment to hand his trunk check to the station agent,
walked briskly into the waiting-room and slammed the door behind him.
“Hello!” he hailed, pulling off a buckskin glove and holding out a big
hand to the stage driver. “Barney, how’s she headin’?”
Mr. Small grinned and took the proffered hand.
“Well, for the land’s sake, Ez Titcomb!” he exclaimed. “Where’d you
drop from? Thought you was somewheres off the coast between New York
and Portland jest ’bout now.”
“Got shore leave for a fortni’t or so,” said the newcomer, unbuttoning
his overcoat with a smart jerk, and throwing it wide open. “Schooner
sprung a leak off Gay Head last trip and she’s hauled up at East
Boston for repairs. Dirty weather, ain’t it? Hello, Lon? How are you,
Ike?”
Mr. Clark and his friend grinned and responded, “How are you, Cap’n
Ez?” in unison.
The arrival was a short, thickset man, with a sunburned face, sharp
eyes, hair that was a reddish brown sprinkled with gray, and a
close-clipped mustache of the same color. He wore a blue overcoat over
a blue suit, and held a cigar firmly in one corner of his mouth. His
movements were quick and sharp, and he snapped out his sentences with
vigor.
“Full cargo to-night?” he asked of Mr. Small, who was buttoning his
overcoat and pulling on his gloves.
“Pretty nigh an empty hold,” was the reply. “Only ’bout one and a ha’f
goin’ over. You’re the one and the boy here’s the ha’f.”
The Captain looked at the boy by the window and smiled pleasantly.
“Well, son,” he observed, “you and me’ll have the whole cabin to
ourselves, won’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the youngster. He had pulled from behind the settee
an old-fashioned carpet-bag, the cadaverous sides of which testified
that the wardrobe it held was not an extensive one. Mr. Clark, who had
a reputation as a humorist to sustain, noticed the bag and rose to the
occasion.
“Say, bub,” he said, “you ought to feed that satchel of yours two or
three of them apple turnovers; maybe ’twould fat up some.”
Ike Bodkin roared at his friend’s witticism, and the boy turned red
and looked out of the window once more. Captain Titcomb noticed the
lad’s confusion, and remarked cheerfully:
“Lon, you remind me of that flyin’ machine old Cap’n Labe Saunders was
perfectin’ for the five years afore he died. You’re fat and full of
hot air, but you won’t work. Turnovers are all right; I like turnovers
myself. All ready, Barney?”
“All aboard!” shouted the stage driver. “Come on, Brad. You and the
Cap’n git inside, while me and Dan git the dunnage on the rack.”
The boy picked up the carpet-bag and followed Mr. Small out to the
rear platform of the station, where the coach, an old-fashioned, dingy
vehicle, drawn by four sleepy horses, stood waiting.
Captain Titcomb followed, his overcoat flapping in the wind.
“Here, Barney,” he observed, “have a cigar to smoke on the road. Have
one, Dan? Here, Lon, here’s a couple for you and Ike. Who’s the little
feller?” he added, in a whisper, to the station agent.
“Ben Nickerson’s boy from Wellmouth. He’s comin’ down to Orham to live
with the old maids. They’ve adopted him.”
“The old maids? Not _the_ old maids? Not Prissy and Tempy?”
“Yup. All right, Barney; I’m comin’.”
The station agent hurried away to help the driver with the Captain’s
sea chest, and its owner, apparently overcome with astonishment,
climbed mutely into the coach, where his fellow passenger had preceded
him.
The old vehicle rocked and groaned as the heavy chest was strapped on
the racks behind. Then it tipped again, as Mr. Small climbed clumsily
to the driver’s seat.
“All ashore that’s goin’ ashore!” shouted Mr. Small. “So long, Dan. Git
dap, Two-forty!”
The whip cracked, the coach reeled on its springs, and the whole
equipage disappeared in the snow and blackness.
“Humph!” grunted Mr. Clark, as he peered after it. “This ain’t no
five-cent cigar. Might know it come from Ez Titcomb. It’s a queer thing
that other coastin’ skippers have to put up with a pipe; but that ain’t
Ez’s style--no sir-ee!”
“Yup,” assented Mr. Bodkin, “and that ain’t the only queer thing. How
is it he can have such good clothes, and fetch home such nice presents
and one thing or ’nother, when other fellows in the same bus’ness
can’t. Oh, he’s smart, all right enough! Some folks thinks he’s _too_
smart. They say----”
“Some folks says he’ll bear watchin’,” continued Lon, puffing
vigorously at the cigar. “Now, understand, _I_ don’t say nothin’,
but----”
“If you fellers are intendin’ to sleep here you’d better be makin’ up
your beds,” interrupted the station agent. “I’m goin’ to shut up shop
and go home.”
* * * * *
This was in the days before the Orham Branch Railroad was built, and
passengers for the latter village were obliged to leave the train at
Harniss and take the ten-mile stage ride under the guidance of Mr.
Small or his partner “Labe” Lothrop. The coaches were of about the same
ages as their drivers, the horses were not so very many years younger,
and the roads were deeply rutted, so the home-coming mariners of Orham,
no matter how smooth their sea voyages might have been, were certain of
a “rough passage” during the concluding portion of their journeys.
The boy, Bradley Nickerson, had never ridden in a stage coach before
and, after ten or fifteen minutes of jolt and roll, he decided that
he never wanted to ride in one again. He had chosen the middle seat,
the back of which was a broad leather strap just high enough to slap
him vigorously on the back of the head when he sat upright, and the
cushions, from years of wear, sloped down to a sharp edge in front. If
he crouched to avoid the strap, he was in danger of sliding off the
seat altogether.
It was dark inside the coach and very stuffy, and the Captain was
smoking. The snow struck the windows as if some one was throwing it in
handfuls. There was some straw on the floor, intended to warm the feet
of passengers who traveled on such nights as this, but Bradley’s feet
did not reach the floor, and there was a vigorous draught of fresh air
coming through the door cracks. In the lulls of the wind, Mr. Small’s
voice was faintly heard singing “Beulah land” or swearing at the horses.
Suddenly Captain Titcomb, who had been silent so far, spoke.
“Heavy sea on to-night,” he observed. “’Pears to me Barney’d better
take a reef. She’s rollin’ consider’ble.”
The boy laughed and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Goin’ all the way to Orham?” asked the Captain.
“Yes, sir.”
“Got folks over there, I presume likely. Friends, or nothin’ but jest
relations?”
“Relations, I--I guess.”
“So! Well, I’ve got a good many relations over there myself. Fact is,
I’ve got relations, seems to me, ’most everywheres. Father used to have
so many of ’em, that when he went visitin’ he used to call it ’goin’
cousinin’.’ My name’s Titcomb; what do they call you when your back
ain’t turned?”
The boy laughed again, in a puzzled way--he scarcely knew what to make
of his questioner--and said that his name was Bradley Nickerson.
“Nickerson, hey? That settles it; you’re a Cape Codder. Minute I meet
anybody named Nickerson I always know they’ve got the same kind of sand
in their boots that I have. Is it Obed Nickerson’s folks you’re goin’
to see?”
“No, sir. I’m goin’ to live with Miss Priscilla Allen. Her and her
sister; they was some of mother’s people.”
“Sho! well I swan!” muttered the Captain. “Prissy and Tempy, hey? Then
Dan wan’t foolin’. And you’re goin’ to live with ’em?”
“Yes, sir. Do you know ’em?”
“Who--me? Oh, yes! I know ’em. I’m a partic’lar friend of theirs. That
is,” he added, cautiously, “I call on ’em once in a while jest to say
‘How are you?’ Why? You didn’t hear any of them fellers at the depot
say anything ’bout me and them, did you? No! Well, all right, I jest
thought----. Oh, yes! I know ’em. Nice folks as ever was, but what you
might call a little mite ‘sot in their ways.’ Do you always wipe your
feet when you come into the house?”
“Why--why--yes, sir; if I don’t forget it.”
“All right; it’s a good habit to git into, ’specially if you’re goin’
to walk on Prissy’s floors. Sometimes I’ve wished I could manage to
put my feet in my pocket when I’ve been there. I wonder if I knew your
father? What was his name?”
Bradley told his father’s name and, in response to the Captain’s
tactful questioning, a good deal more besides. In fact, before long
Captain Titcomb knew all about the boy, where he came from, how he
happened to come, and all the rest. And Bradley, for his part, learned
that his companion commanded the coasting schooner _Thomas Doane_;
that he had been a sailor ever since he was fourteen; that he had
a marvelous fund of sea yarns and knew how to spin them; and that
he--Bradley--liked him.
By and by the Captain noticed that the boy’s replies to his cheerful
observations were growing rather incoherent, and, suspecting the
reason, he ceased to talk. A few minutes later he leaned forward and
smiled to find his fellow traveler, who had slipped down upon the
cushion, fast asleep. Carefully he drew up the boy’s feet, made him
more comfortable, and taking the worn laprobe from his own knees, threw
it over the sleeper. Bradley dozed on in the darkness. An hour went by,
and then he was awakened by the coach stopping. Outside some one was
yelling, “Hi, there!” at the top of his lungs.
“Don’t be scared, Bradley,” said the Captain. “It’s only foolish Sol.”
He lowered the upper half of the window as he spoke and Bradley saw a
light zig-zagging down a bank by the roadside. As it came nearer he saw
that it was a lantern in the hands of a tall man with red whiskers,
who, muffled in a striped tippet and a mangy fur cap, came stumbling
through the snow to the coach.
“Hello, Sol!” hailed Mr. Small from the box. “What d’you want?”
“Hi, there!” said the man with the lantern. “Got any terbacker?”
The stage driver produced a plug, cut off a fair-sized chunk with a big
knife, and handed it down to the man.
“There you be,” he observed, and added, “would you b’lieve it, Sol, I
kind of s’picioned you wanted terbacker when I fust heard you.”
“Here’s a plug I brought on purpose for you, Sol,” said Captain
Titcomb, handing a carefully wrapped package through the open window.
The man grinned, took the tobacco, and stood grinning and bowing as the
coach went on.
“That’s foolish Sol Newcomb,” explained Captain Titcomb. “His top
riggin’s out of gear, but he’s a harmless critter. Lives off in the
woods here, and there ain’t a trip this coach makes, day or night, that
he ain’t waitin’ for it, to beg terbacker. Some folks carry a piece on
purpose for him.”
The next time Bradley awoke, Captain Titcomb was standing on the ground
by the open door of the coach.
“Good night, Brad,” he said. “Here’s where I’m bound for. You’ve got a
five-minute ride or so more ’fore you git to the old mai--that is, to
Prissy and Tempy’s. I’ll see you to-morrer. You and me’s goin’ to be
chums, you know.”
The door was shut; Mr. Small struck up “Camptown Races,” and the stage
bumped on again. This time the boy did not sleep, but, holding on to
the strap, tried to peer through the snow-crusted window. He saw a
light here and there, but little else. After a short interval the coach
turned a sharp corner, rolled on for perhaps twice its length, and then
stopped.
Mr. Small opened the door and Bradley, looking past him, saw the side
of a large house, and a lighted doorway with two female figures, one
plump and the other slender, standing in it. From behind them the
lamplight streamed warm and bright and sent their shadows almost to his
feet.
“Come on, bub,” said the stage driver, “here’s where you git out. Miss
Prissy,” he shouted, “here’s your new boarder.”
[Illustration]