The Stowaway Girl | Page 6

appetizer meself w'en I'm off dooty, so to speak, but it's no joke to 'ave
a boozer in charge of a fine ship an' vallyble freight. Of course, you're
responsible as master, but you can't be on deck mornin', noon, an' night.
Choke Watts off the drink, an' you'll 'ave no trouble. So that's settled.
My, but you're fair meltin'--wot is it they say--losin' adipose tisher.

Well, come along. Let's lubricate."
* * * * * *
The Andromeda sailed on the Tuesday afternoon's tide. She would drop
the pilot off Holyhead, and, with fair weather, such as cheered her
departure from the Mersey, daybreak on Thursday would find her
pounding through the cross seas where St. George's Channel merges
into the wide Atlantic. If she followed the beaten track on her long run
to the River Plate--as sailors will persist in miscalling that wondrous
Rio de la Plata--she might be signaled from Madeira or the Cape Verde
Islands. But shipmasters often prefer to set a course clear of the land till
they pick up the coast of South America. If she were not spoken by
some passing steamer, there was every possibility that the sturdy old
vessel would not be heard of again before reaching her destination.
* * * * * *
But David Verity heard of her much sooner, and no thunderbolt that
ever rent the heavens could have startled him more than the manner of
that hearing.
Resolving to clinch matters with regard to Iris and her elderly suitor, he
invited "Owd Dickey" to supper on Sunday evening. The girl endured
the man's presence with a placid dignity that amazed her uncle. On the
plea of a headache, she retired at an early hour, leaving Bulmer to gloat
over his prospective happiness, and primed to the point of dementia.
He was quite willing to accompany Verity to the bank next morning; a
pleasant-spoken manager sighed his relief when the visitors were gone,
and he was free to look at the item "bills discounted" on Verity's page
in the ledger. More than that, a lawyer was instructed to draw up a
partnership deed, and the representatives of various ship-building firms
were asked to supply estimates for two new vessels.
Altogether Dickey was complaisant, and David enjoyed a busy and
successful day. He dined in town, came home at a late hour, and merely
grinned when a servant told him that Mr. Bulmer had called twice but

Miss Iris happened to be out on both occasions.
Nevertheless, at breakfast on Tuesday, he warned his niece not to keep
her admirer dangling at arm's length.
"E's a queer owd codger," explained the philosopher. "Play up to 'im a
bit, an' you'll be able to twist 'im round your little finger. I b'lieve he's
goin' dotty, an' you can trust me to see that the marriage settlement is O.
K."
"Will you be home to dinner?" was her response.
"No. Now that the firm is in smooth water again I must show myself a
bit. It's all thanks to you, lass, an' I'll not forget it. Good-by!"
Iris smiled, and Verity was vastly pleased.
"I am sure you will not forget," she said. "Good-by."
"There's no understandin' wimmin," mused David, as his victoria swept
through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might
ha' bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a
chocolate drop."
Again he returned some few minutes after midnight; again the servant
announced Mr. Bulmer's visits, three of them; and again Miss Iris had
been absent--in fact, she had not yet come home.
"Not 'ome!" cried David furiously. "W'y it's gone twelve. W'ere
the--w'ere is she?"
No one knew. She had quitted the house soon after Verity himself, and
had not been seen since. Storm and rage as he might, and did, David
could not discover his niece's whereabouts. He spent a wearying and
tortured night, a harassed and miserable day, devoted to frantic
inquiries in every possible direction with interludes of specious lying to
the infatuated Bulmer. But enlightment came on Thursday morning. A
letter arrived by the first post. It was from Iris.

"MY DEAR UNCLE," she wrote: "Neither you nor Mr. Bulmer should
have any objection to my passing the few remaining weeks of my
liberty in the manner best pleasing to myself. On Sunday evening, in
your presence, Mr. Bulmer urged me to fix an early date for our
marriage. Tell him that I shall marry him when the Andromeda returns
to England from South America. You will remember that you promised
last year to take me to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Ayres this summer; I
have been learning Spanish so as to help our sight-seeing.
Unfortunately, business prevents you from keeping that promise, but