Hocken and Hunken | Page 8

"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 passed 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
hell."
"Eh? . . . I don't see--"
"He's goin' to hell," 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