CHAPTER XIV

VEERING WINDS

There never had been before as serious a conference between the three Pettys in that kitchen as this one. Tom might well thank his lucky stars that Uncle Jonah Hand had thrown his bombshell. The surprise of it sponged from his mother's mind all immediate thought of his crime, which had been revealed during the last few minutes.

"There!" was Orrin's whine, first to break the silence after Cap'n Jonah had departed. "What did I tell ye?"

Sarah glared at her husband furiously. Tom licked his lips and doubled his fists. He could have pommeled his father and pommeled him well!

"Aw--you----" he began, but helplessly.

"Orrin Petty," said Sarah at last, "if you knew so much--and if you know so much now--why didn't you bring out your stores of wisdom before things come to this pass? Do you realize what it means? There's no fool like an old fool. If Uncle Jonah has taken a fancy to Pearly an' wills her his fortune, where'll we be, I want to know?"

"Jest about here, or hereabout," responded Orrin, for once undaunted by his wife's sharp tongue. "But it looks like we won't have so much money as mebbe we would have had, if ye'd taken my advice and gone easy with your Uncle Jonah."

"We don't know that he's got much of a fortune even now," said the woman sourly. Her quick mind was beginning to function again with its usual shrewdness. She had only been stunned by Cap'n Jonah's declaration. She was rapidly recovering. "We don't know----"

"I knowed it all along," put in Tom, siding with his father for the nonce. "When Uncle Jonah give me that money----"

"How much did he give you?" interrupted his mother sharply.

"A twenty-dollar bill. Handed it out just as though it growed on bushes and he had a private patch of his own," chuckled Tom.

"See that boy laugh!" exclaimed Orrin. "He ain't got no idee of how serious this may be for us all. If Cap'n Jonah wills away his prop'ty, whatever it may be, and makes a demand on your father's estate, Sarah, for principal and int'rest on that two thousand dollar note----"

"You go fish!" exclaimed Sarah Petty, in exasperation. "If I ever did despise anybody it's them that always bring out their hindsight for their foresight. Looks like the aig's been broken; le's see if we can save the shell, anyway."

"Of course, mebbe he ain't got much," said the cautious Orrin.

"There you go again!" ejaculated his wife with disgust. "Leavin' a hole to creep out of backwards! I thank heaven I ain't the same kind of a fool you be, Orrin Petty, if I am one!

"It looks to me like we'd fooled ourselves," went on Sarah practically. "But that don't mean we air sure to lose anything that's worth keeping. Uncle Jonah must be a mighty secret man--nothing at all like what father was. Father'd turn himself inside out jest as easy as you'd skin an eel. But Jonah Hand is secret--if he's got a fortune. He don't let no papers relating to it lie around where a body might see 'em. And he must have something to will, or he wouldn't have spoke up so free when he was mad, as he did jest now."

"Hoh!" growled Tom. "If he _does_ give it all to Pearly----"

"You shet your mouth!" commanded his mother tartly. "You've made enough mess for once, Tom Petty. Your foolin' with that gal is the root of all the trouble. Comin' down here jes' now and telling me she was in Helmford's room----"

"An' she was!"

Sarah Petty overrode his voice, pursuing her topic with shrewdness:

"Your Uncle Jonah is a masterful man after all. He ain't give way to his temper afore; but that ain't sayin' he ain't got none. He speaks like a man that means what he says an' says what he means. He may march off to Paulmouth to-morrow and make a will in Pearly's favor."

"That would be a nice to-do," groaned Orrin.

"I dunno," said Sarah, eyeing Tom wrathfully. "It's all along of this boy's actions. And it seems, Orrin Petty, that you brought Pearl home here jest to make trouble for us all. Course, the gal's long ago set her cap for Tom."

The youth began to preen. It bolstered his conceit to hear his mother say this.

"You know how girls are, Marm," he murmured.

"An' I know how you be, Tom Petty," she rejoined grimly. "I found out to-night if never before. You're tangled up with this gal your father brought home against _my_ wishes," (Orrin stirred uneasily; this was a bare-faced falsehood) "and I don't see but we'll haf to make the best of it. Though I don't see what we're to say to your Uncles 'Poley and Perseus, _and_ their wives. The gal's sech a numbskull----"

"She's a good looker," Orrin ventured. "Dress her up----"

"Who says she's a good looker?" flared Sarah, who would never be too old to cavil at another woman's beauty. "She's a pink-faced little rat! But she's good enough, I guess, for this Tom Petty. He don't deserve nothin' better. And if this old tramp does give the dratted girl his money it needn't go out of the fam'ly."

"Goshamighty! what's that you air sayin', Sarah?" demanded Orrin, while Tom stared at his mother in open-mouthed amazement.

"If he's got any money," Sarah steadily pursued, "and he gives it to Pearl, we'll know for sure soon enough. You're detarmined to marry her, Tom----"

"I dunno as I am," interrupted Tom, bound not to be driven.

"You'll jest haf to marry her, I s'pose, it's gone so far," said his mother, licking her thin lips and her green eyes snapping. "And when you do, Uncle Jonah's money will be as good as yours. And this place when we die, an' such prop'ty as your pop an' I may have. So if Uncle Jonah ever brings up that old note of your grandpa's it won't amount to nothin'."

"Goshamighty!" exclaimed the eager Orrin, again. "Jest like takin' money from one pants pocket and puttin' it in t'other."

"Course we'll find out for sure, first," added Sarah, "if Uncle Jonah really has got anything worth willin' to anybody."

"How you goin' to?" demanded Tom. "You ain't found out a thing so far, Marm. Only what he just said."

"I am a-goin' to ask him straight, _has_ he," declared Sarah Petty. "It's for Pearl's own good I'll ask him. To protect her. He's promised her something and we're her guardeens. We must know if he means what he says and how much she is to be benefited by his will. And see to it he makes a will, into the bargain."

"You'd better go easy--you'd better go easy," Orrin warned, although quite used to his wife's assertive ways and her ability to see ahead and, as she expressed it, "trim her sails accordin'." "If he died intes--intes----Wal, without makin' a will--his money'd come straight to you, Sarah Petty."

"We don't know how long he's got to live," said his wife practically. "The Hands is tougher than pine knots. There ain't a thing the matter with him but rheumatics. He may live along for twenty year.

"After all's said and done, he might not do a single solitary thing for me," confessed Sarah Petty. "I can git board money out of him, but that's about all. If he's taken a fancy to Pearly, however, he may be encouraged to do a lot for her--and for Tom. That's what we must look out for. Tom, you keep on bein' nice to your Uncle Jonah. P'r'aps he'll hand out more money to ye--though 'twon't do ye no good if ye don't put it in the bank, I must say."

"And then it'll do the bankers good," said Tom with scorn. "What's money for?"

"You'll find out one o' these days, you young spendthrift," said his father tartly.

"I s'pose the gal would fall into your arms, Tom, if you asked her to marry you?" said Sarah Petty thoughtfully.

Tom grinned broadly. "She uster like me. You see how she lent me that money. But since this Helmford feller's come here she's got crazy 'bout him. You can see that."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed his mother. "You speak up nice to Pearly and she'll see you mean business. Of course she's always wanted ye," insisted the woman, determined to see the matter in no other light "But I don't want you to do anything, or say anything, to make Mr. Helmford mad. I'll speak to him about her bein' in his room. _That_ ain't decent. But I ain't goin' to lose a good boarder like him along of your foolishness, Tom Petty."

Tom grunted a disavowal of any belief in his mother's way of putting it. He knew in his heart that Pearl had given him little reason of late to think she cared an iota for him. But he was too much his mother's son after all to admit this. He determined secretly to get Helmford out of the house. "Out of sight, out of mind" was Tom's doctrine. He believed, in his conceit, that he could make Pearl forget the man from the fish hatchery if the latter were gone.

"All you've got to do is to salve these girls over, and talk to 'em pretty," mused Tom. "That'll fetch 'em ev'ry time."

So the three Pettys sought their beds on this frosty night, all with thoughts to keep them awake. In other rooms in the house three other members of the household were likewise wakeful.

Pearl cried herself to sleep finally. She was ashamed after what had happened to face Mr. Helmford again. She thought not at all of Cap'n Jonah's threat which had created the fear of disaster in the Petty camp. She was only grateful to the old mariner for taking her part.

Joe Helmford had spent a very unsatisfactory evening after the abrupt visit of Tom Petty and his mother. He was half determined to leave the house at the end of the week. These Pettys were almost unendurable.

And then he began to wonder what effect his going so abruptly would have on Pearl Holden? He knew that she was treated unkindly by the Pettys. He had often seen tears in her eyes and Sarah's sharp, shrill voice could not fail to reach his ear on more than one occasion when she was berating her little drudge.

Helmford had suddenly got a new revelation of Pearl's character. He had begun to appreciate not alone her sweetness but the real depth of her nature. The girl easily assimilated new things. Her mind was thirsty for knowledge. She was beginning already to blossom into a fuller mental development.

This young man who heretofore had given such small thought to any woman found himself lying awake at night thinking of this girl.

Physically she was charming, as well as sweet of nature. He visualized her as his sisters and cousins were wont to dress. Why, in appearance she would vie with the best of them. Her speech--well, of course, it was tinged somewhat by the environment in which she was born. But that was not a fault that could not be rectified, Helmford decided.

When a young man allows his mind to run along in such vein, with any particular girl as the visioned object of his thoughts, he is bordering upon a state of feeling that leads directly to matrimony. But Joe Helmford drew back from this and resolutely refused to face it.

He punched his pillow again and determinedly went to sleep.

At the other end of the house, in the crooked little room over the kitchen, Cap'n Jonah was likewise wakeful. In the first place he was cold. Sarah had not given him bed-clothes enough. He had closed his window, which was against the tenets of a lifelong belief in fresh air, and still he shook in his bed.

Running down stairs in his stocking feet to defend Pearly had chilled Cap'n Jonah to the bone. His teeth chattered. He could feel the tip of his nose turning to a numb lump of flesh. Icicles formed against the edge of the thin blanket where his breath was expelled. He could hear the ice cracking in his water pitcher.

But even in such a plight Cap'n Jonah might have slept, at least fitfully, had it not been for his thoughts. His excitement and anger should have heated the old mariner so that physical cold could not touch him.

He had given way to his temper and vented his rage in a way quite foreign to his habit. Cap'n Jonah usually had complete mastery of himself.

But the treatment accorded Pearl had finally brought the deeper feelings of the master mariner to the surface. He was unable longer to endure in silence the pain of seeing the girl so abused.

Tom's desperate meanness, too, served to whip the old man's rage to a froth. And that froth was what had spilled upon the startled Petty family when Cap'n Jonah made his astonishing threat.

"Whatever! Now I _have_ done it!" he kept repeating to himself as he lay in his uncomfortable bed. "I've got to do somethin'--I really have. Got to make good that bluff. I could see Sarah and Orrin was all struck of a heap. If they think I've got money an' that Pearly may get it if they don't treat her better, they'll near 'bout turn themselves inside out to salve her over--an' me, too.

"But, whatever!" he concluded. "Somehow, I must make good that bluff. If I ain't a rich man, I've got to make them think I am."