Hocken and Hunken Part 4

The child obeyed.

"You see this gentleman?"

"Yes, master." Her eyes, as she turned them upon Captain Cai, were frank enough, or frank as eyes could be that guarded a soul behind glooms of reserve. They were straight, at any rate, and unflinching, and very serious.

"You know his business?"

"I think so, master. . . . Has he come to sign the lease? I'll fetch it from your desk, if you'll give me the keys."

"Bide a bit, missy," said Captain Cai. "That'd be buying a pig in a poke, when I ha'n't even seen the house yet--not," he added, with a glance at Mr Rogers, "that I make any doubt of its suiting.

But business is business."

The child turned to her master, as much as to ask, "What, then, is your need of me?"

"Cap'n Hocken wants a servant," said Mr Rogers, answering the look.

She appeared to ponder this. "Before seein' the house?" she asked, after a moment or two.

"She had us there, Rogers!" chuckled Captain Cai; but the child was perfectly serious.

"You would like me to show you the house? Master has the key."

"That's an idea, now!" He was still amused.

"When?"

"This moment--that's to say, if your master'll spare you?" He glanced at Mr Rogers, who nodded.

"Couldn't do better," he agreed. "You've a good two hours afore dusk, an' she's a proper dictionary on taps an' drainage."

"Please you to come along, sir." The child waited respectfully while Captain Cai arose, picked up his hat, and bade his host "So long!"

He followed her downstairs.

Their way to the street lay through the shop, and by the rearward door of it she paused to reach down her hat and small jacket. The shop was long, dark, intricate; its main window overshadowed by the bulk of the Town Hall, across the narrow alley-way; its end window, which gave on the Quay, blocked high with cheeses, biscuit-tins, boxes of soap, and dried Newfoundland cod. Into this gloom the child flung her voice, and Captain Cai was aware of the upper half of a man's body dimly silhouetted there against the panes.

"Daddy, I'm going out."

"Yes, dear," answered the man's voice dully. "For an hour, very likely.

This gentleman wants to see his new house, and I'm to show it to him."

"Yes, dear."

"You'll be careful, won't you now? Mrs M--fus'll be coming round, certain, for half-a-pound of bacon; And that P--fus girl for candles, if not for sugar. You've to serve neither, mind, until you see their money."

"Yes, dear. What excuse shall I make?" The man's voice was weary but patient. The tone of it set a chord humming faintly somewhere in Captain Cai's memory: but his mind worked slowly and (as he would have put it) wanted sea-room, to come about.

They had taken but a few steps, however, when in the narrow street, known as Dolphin Row, he pulled up with all sail shaking.

"That there party as we pa.s.sed in the shop--"

"He's my father," said the child quickly.

"And you're Tabb's child. . . . You don't tell me that was Lijah Tabb, as used to be master o' the _Uncle an' Aunt?_"

"I don't tell you anything," said the child, and added, "he's a different man altogether."

"That's curious now." Captain Cai walked on a pace or two and halted again. "But you're Tabb's child," he insisted. "And, by the trick of his voice, if that wasn't Lijah--"

"His name _is_ Elijah."

"Eh?" queried Captain Cai, rubbing his ear. "But I heard tell," he went on in a puzzled way, searching his memory, "as Lijah Tabb an' Rogers had quarrelled desp'rate an' burnt the papers, so to speak."

"'Twas worse than that." She did not answer his look, but kept her eyes fixed ahead.

"Yet here I find the man keepin' shop for Rogers: and as for you--if you're his daughter--"

"I'm in service with Mr Rogers," said Fancy, who as if in a moment had recovered her composure. "If you want to know why, sir, and won't chat about it, I don't mind tellin' you."

"You make me curious, little maid: that I'll own."

"'Tis simple enough, too," said she. "He's had a stroke, an' he's goin to h.e.l.l."

"Eh? . . . I don't see--"

"He's goin' to h.e.l.l," she repeated with a nod as over a matter that admitted no dispute.

"Well, but dang it all!" protested Captain Cai after a pause, "we'll allow as he's goin' there, for the sake of argyment. Is that why you're tendin' on him so careful?"

"You mustn't think," answered the child, "that I'm doin' it out o' pity altogether. There's something terrible fascinatin' about a man in that position."

CHAPTER IV.

VOICES IN THE TWILIGHT.

"I don't see anything immodest in it," said Mrs Bosenna looking up.

She was on her knees and had just finished pressing the earth about the roots of a small rose-bush. "The house is mine, and naturally I am curious to know something about my tenant."

Dinah, her middle-aged maid, who had been holding the bush upright and steady, answered this challenge with a short sniff. "He don't seem over curious, for his part, about _you_." She, too, glanced upward and toward the house, the upper storey alone of which, from where they stood, was visible above the spikes of a green palisade. A roadway divided the house from the garden, which descended to the harbour-cliff in a series of tiny terraces. "They've been pokin' around indoors this hour and more."

"You don't suppose he caught sight of us?"

"Maybe not; but Tabb's child did. That girl 've a-got eyes like niddles. If he don't come down to pay his respects, you may bet 'tis because he don't want to." Dinah, being vexed, spoke viciously.

Her speech implied that her mistress's conduct had been not only indelicate but clumsy.

"You are a horrid woman," Mrs Bosenna accused her; "and I can't think what put such nasty-minded thoughts into your head."