The Vultures | Page 6

his cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
"No," she said, firmly, "you are going to smoke again at once. Do you think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner--is it not foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now."
As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder and looked down at him.
"As if it mattered whether I like it or not," she said. "And I do like it--I like the smell of your cigars."
Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which was perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express tenderness.
"As if it mattered what I think," she said, humbly, again.
"Always like to conciliate a lady," said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
"Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and her frocks," answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner was, nevertheless, able to overhear.
"Where is your aunt Jooly?" inquired the old man, hurriedly. "I thought she was coming on deck."
"So she is," answered Netty. "I left her in the saloon. She is quite well. She was talking to some people."
"What, already?" exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
"My sister Jooly, sir," explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, "is no doubt known to you--Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City."
Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived in the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible to be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
"Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?" suggested Mr. Mangles, not unkindly.
"No--I think not."
"Her line is--at present--prisons."
"I have never been in prison," replied Cartoner.
"No doubt you will get experience in course of time," said Mr. Mangles, with his deep, curt laugh. "No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets on platforms and talks."
"What about?" asked Cartoner.
Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
"About most things," he answered, gravely; "chiefly about women, I take it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them. And she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick there. She had found out what very few women know--namely, that when women work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody wants. So Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment, and pointing out to the public and the administration many ways in which women may be profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption of the government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice berth for which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments have no gumption, sir. And--"
"Here is Aunt Julie," interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty Cahere's face--perhaps he caught a glance from the dark- lashed eyes--for he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his face.

II
SIGNAL HOUSE
Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet--where the spicy odors of chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray sky-- there stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called no one knows and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square house of the Jacobean period--presumably because it is so hidden by trees, so wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get at, that its outward form is no longer to be perceived.
It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of the tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they are never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted them shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A side gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall, up an alley, is labelled "Tradesman's Entrance," but the tradesmen never linger there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin, blue milk on that threshold. The