The Skipper and the Skipped | Page 7

friends so much, that now I can't seem to
help it. You truly do seem like an old friend, you have been so willing
to do what I asked of you, after you had time to think it over."
The Cap'n was now congratulating himself that he hadn't blurted out
anything about the bridge director and that sapling fence. It certainly
was a grateful sound--that praise from the pretty lady! He didn't want to
interrupt it.
"Now will you go on with that story of the storm?" she begged,
hitching the chair a bit nearer. "I want to hear about your adventures."

She had all the instincts of Desdemona, did that pretty little lady. Three
times that week she came to the toll-house and listened with lips apart
and eyes shining. Cap'n Sproul had never heard of Othello and his
wooing, but after a time his heart began to glow under the reverent
regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more naturally
come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved, and he--robbed
of his mistress, the sea--yearned for just such companionship as she
was giving him. He had known that life lacked something. This was it.
And when one day, after a stuttering preamble that lasted a full half
hour, he finally blurted out his heart-hankering, she wept a little while
on his shoulder--it being luckily a time when there was no one
passing--and then sobbingly declared it could never be.
"'Fraid of your brother, hey?" he inquired.
She bumped her forehead gently on his shoulder in nod of assent.
"I reckon ye like me?"
"Oh, Aaron!" It was a volume of rebuke, appeal, and affection in two
words.
"Then there ain't nothin' more to say, little woman. You ain't never had
any one to look out for your int'rests in this life. After this, it's me that
does it. I don't want your money. I've got plenty of my own. But your
interests bein' my interests after this, you hand ev'rything over to me,
and I'll put a twist in the tail of that Bengal tiger in your fam'ly that 'll
last him all his life."
At the end of a long talk he sent her away with a pat on her shoulder
and a cheery word in her ear.
It was Old Man Jordan who, a week or so later, on his way to the
village with butter in his bucket, stood in the middle of the road and
tossed his arms so frenziedly that Colonel Ward, gathering up his speed
behind the willows, pulled up with an oath.

"Ye're jest gittin' back from up-country, ain't ye?" asked Uncle Jordan.
"What do you mean, you old fool, by stoppin' me when I'm busy? What
be ye, gittin' items for newspapers?"
"No, Kun'l Ward, but I've got some news that I thought ye might like to
hear before ye went past the toll-house this time. Intentions between
Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Miss Jane Ward has been published."
"Wha-a-at!"
"They were married yistiddy."
"Wha--" The cry broke into inarticulateness.
"The Cap'n ain't goin' to be toll-man after to-day. Says he's goin' to live
on the home place with his wife. There!" Uncle Jordan stepped to one
side just in time, for the gaunt horse sprung under the lash as though he
had the wings of Pegasus.
The Cap'n was sitting in front of the toll-house. The tall horse galloped
down the hill, but the Colonel stood up, and, with elbows akimbo and
hands under his chin, yanked the animal to a standstill, his splay feet
skating through the highway dust. The Colonel leaped over the wheel
and reversed his heavy whip-butt. The Cap'n stood up, gripping a stout
cudgel that he had been whittling at for many hours.
While the new arrival was choking with an awful word that he was
trying his best to work out of his throat, the Cap'n pulled his little
note-book out of his pocket and slowly drawled:
"I reckoned as how ye might find time to stop some day, and I've got
your account all figgered. You owe thirteen tolls at ten cents each, one
thutty, and thirteen times three dollars fine--the whole amountin' to jest
forty dollars and thutty cents. Then there's a gate to--"
"I'm goin' to kill you right in your tracks where you stand!" bellowed
the Colonel.

The Cap'n didn't wait for the attack. He leaped down off his porch, and
advanced with the fierce intrepidity of a sea tyrant.
"You'll pay that toll bill," he gritted, "if I have to pick it out of your
pockets whilst the coroner is settin' on your remains."
The bully of the countryside quailed.
"You've stole my sister!" he screamed. "This ain't about toll I'm talkin'.
You've been and robbed me