Her Sailor. Marshall Saunders

frivolous,” said Mrs. Danvers, with a judicial air.

      “Would you have her a suspicious old woman?” retorted her husband. “She’s got the b-best heart and the s-sweetest disposition—she’s a fine girl,” he concluded, lamely. He could not be eloquent, but he felt deeply, and his prominent eyes watered in a sincere and affectionate manner as he went on with his breakfast.

      “Where’s my coffee?” he asked, presently.

      Mrs. Danvers started slightly, and passed him the forgotten cup.

      “You’ve half filled it with sugar,” he said, “I guess you were dreaming when you poured it.”

      Again she said nothing, and quietly poured him another cup; but he persisted, “What was you thinking of, Melinda?”

      “I was pondering on the mysteries of the law of mutual selection, if you must know,” she said, calmly.

      He surveyed her suspiciously. She had been a school-teacher before she married him, and her education had been greatly superior to his own. Comprehending his state of mind, she went on, kindly: “With regard to Fordyce and Nina. He lands in a state where there are one hundred and fifty thousand more women than men. The most of those women have good eyes, ears, noses, fine heads of hair, yet he comes rushing over the border into New Hampshire.”

      “I’ll venture to say there isn’t another Nina in Massachusetts,” said the fat man.

      “I agree with you there. She is unique.”

      “Do you think she likes Fordyce well enough to marry him?” he asked, anxiously.

      Mrs. Danvers became thoughtful, until an impatient movement from her husband forced an opinion from her. “I don’t know, Israel. I guess she likes him better than she pretends to, and you’ve no occasion to worry about her marrying him. Wild horses wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do; but I don’t know all her mind about Fordyce. She understands me better than I understand her.”

      Surprised at this unlooked-for admission, he said, agreeably, “She’s a clever little coot.”

      “Clever—she’s the smartest girl I ever saw. She’s too smart. I’m afraid Fordyce will have trouble with her.”

      “Clever, how clever?” interposed Mr. Danvers, up in arms for his favourite. “You don’t mean to say she’s sneaky?”

      “No, not sneaky,” said Mrs. Danvers, in deep thought; “not sneaky, but shy and nervous, and pretending she’s got plenty of coolness when she hasn’t, and more one for getting her way secretly than openly. And she’s full of tricks and moods and quirks of all kinds. You don’t understand her, Israel.”

      Mr. Danvers did not know whether to be gratified or annoyed by his wife’s expansive state of mind. She had never before spoken just so freely of their adopted daughter. “I don’t try to understand her,” he said, doubtfully. “I just take her as she is.”

      “Fordyce don’t. He wants to know every thought in her mind,” proceeded Mrs. Danvers, “and thinks he knows them, too, but sometimes he’s too sure.”

      “He’s too short with her, too short,” observed Mr. Danvers, pettishly. “He ought to take into account that she’s got a will of her own.”

      “He’s a primitive man; he’d kill any one that took her away from him. You see he’s got nothing but her.”

      Mr. Danvers was silent. He did not know what she meant by a primitive man.

      “He could step right out into the woods and live with savages,” explained Mrs. Danvers; “and if he wanted a woman he’d knock her down with his club and carry her off to his cave with the best of them.”

      Mr. Danvers treated her to an exhibition of open-mouthed astonishment and disapproval. “Melinda, are you crazy to talk of such goings-on?”

      “Men don’t do such things nowadays,” she said, soothingly, “but there’s a heap of wild nature in a good many of us. I guess you’d like to turn Fordyce out this very minute.”

      “You bet your life I would,” said the fat man, with energy, and without premeditation. “I’d send him flying down that road. He’s too old for Nina. Let her marry one of the boys around here.”

      “Do you know what she calls the Rubicon Meadows boys?” asked Mrs. Danvers, dryly.

      “No, but I know she don’t mean a third of what she says.”

      “Giggling colts, Israel. Colts, just think of it. You see Fordyce has a kind of manner of knowing everything, and he’s out in the world. Then he comes stealing in her life like a mystery, and she likes that. I guess we’ve got to let him have her. We couldn’t stop him, anyway. He’ll tame her and she’ll do him good. I expect he’s mortal blue at times.”

      Mr. Danvers relapsed into sullenness, tinged with vindictiveness. He understood his wife well enough to know that the burden of her talk was the duty of resignation. “You’ve always been hard on that girl,” he said, irascibly.

      “Hard on her, Israel! Seventeen years I’ve had her, and there isn’t a soul in Rubicon Meadows besides you that guesses she isn’t our own child. How’s that for being hard on her?”

      Melinda’s eyes were sparkling. She looked ten years younger than she had before their conversation began, and he abruptly drifted into memories of bygone days. So far back did he go that it was some time before he murmured, absently: “Howsomever, you’ve been well paid for it.”

      “Paid for it,” she repeated, with asperity, “there are some things money can’t pay for.”

      This was a statement he could not deny, yet in some indefinable and inexplicable way he felt that she had been slightly lacking in her duty to the lovable butterfly outside. Melinda did not admire the pretty creature as he did; and at this very instant her unusual outspokenness and animation arose from her acute suspicion that their vivacious charge was about spreading her wings for flight.

      She was a good woman, though, this wife of his, and she was only a trifle queer. However, everybody seemed queer but himself, and he sank into bitter and resigned reflection, and muttered, almost inaudibly, “After all said and done, we’ve got to take folks after the pattern they’re made, and not as we’d make ’em over.”

      Mrs. Danvers saw that the tide was turning. “Israel,” she said, solemnly shaking her head at him, “no one will ever know what I’ve gone through with that child. When she was laid in my arms a little, motherless babe, and her tiny fingers curled around mine, my heart went out to her. She’s got it yet, but she’s been greatly provoking, and you’ve made too much of her, Israel, you know you have.”

      “I’ll not deny I’ve favoured her some,” he said, gruffly.

      “I’ve never spoken about it before,” she replied, nervously, “and I’ll never say it again; but I’ve been jealous of that girl, Israel, real jealous; and yet, with it all, you’ll not miss her as much when she goes as I will. A man gets over things. A woman broods.”

      Mr. Danvers weakly toyed with a morsel of bread.

      “I’ve got some of the mother spirit,” his wife went on, with tears in her eyes. “Enough of it, thank the Lord, to make me sorry to have her go. We’ve got to be lonely, Israel, real lonely, after she leaves, and I’m glad to have this talk first.”

      Mr. Danvers was embarrassed, exceedingly embarrassed; and for the first time in his life was willing to acknowledge that possibly he might have done wrong, possibly he might have indulged too much the pink and white gipsy in the muslin frock outside. However, it was not befitting his position as head of the household to eat too large a piece of humble pie at one time, so he said, protestingly, “As for jealousy, how you women run on. You’re just like wildfire. Now I’ve liked that little girl just as if she was my own, but not like you, Melinda. A man’s wife is different. I wonder you speak of such a