CHAPTER XV

MISUNDERSTANDINGS

When Cap'n Jonah Hand awoke from a final fitful sleep the following morning, he thought at first any scheme he might have for the befooling of the Pettys must be postponed. When he awoke to find the edge of a red sun peeping above the sea-line, he could scarcely turn over in bed.

"Whatever! It's got me!" groaned the master mariner, and something like fear clawed at his staunch old heart.

He had passed through storm and stress at sea for nearly half a century and had never shown the white feather. As he once related to 'Liphalet Truitt, he had faced death at the hands of savages, and death in a most horrid form, without a quiver. He had been rich without losing his poise; he had been utterly penniless, yet had retained his cheerfulness. The ups and downs of life had left Jonah Hand, despite his given name, a man who believed in his own good fortune and submitted to such buffets as he suffered with composure.

Here was something new. "To be cast upon his beam ends," as he termed it, by such an enemy as this, discouraged him. He had felt premonitions of the ailment for several years. He had seen many seamen go down before this enemy, who would have stood staunchly to face the elements, or against the troubles that are the common lot of man.

"Oh! Ah! Ouch! Whatever!" groaned the captain, turning over by fits and starts.

Every movement hurt him. His joints seemed to have stiffened during the night, and whenever he sought to bend them, sharp pains shot through them. Even his fingers had no flexibility.

"It's got me--the dratted rheumatics!" he muttered. "I might ha' knowed it, after trottin' over that cold floor an' up an' down the stairs without my shoes. Ouch! Whatever!"

He felt that he could not rise--he who was always the first of the household astir. He heard Orrin and Tom come yawning down into the kitchen. They started the fire in the range and shook down the sitting-room stove and opened the drafts. Then they went out to do the barn chores.

"Goshamighty!" rose Orrin's querulous voice on the frosty air, "barn pump's froze tighter'n a drumhead. Bring a kittle of boilin' water, Tom."

Sarah Petty's heels were now heard tapping over the kitchen floor. For once Pearl came last. Cap'n Jonah, overhead, did not hear a word spoken between the two women.

The silence he thought seemed ominous. What was about to occur? Would there be a flare-up between Sarah and her little drudge and would Cap'n Jonah immediately have to make good his threat of taking Pearl away?

"And me on a lee shore the way I be!" groaned Cap'n Jonah. "No two ways about it: I have got myself into a mess."

How would he be able to act independently, or to aid Pearl in any way, if he was flat on his back? Why, he could not even get down to Cap'n Abe's to see if the storekeeper had thought up any scheme to help him, as he had promised.

The preparations for breakfast went on. He could hear the rattling of dishes and pans; the sound of the pump at the spout of which the tea-kettle had to be filled for a second time; the sputtering of sausages in the pan. Then the odors rose to him in that mysterious way they have of penetrating old houses; the aroma of coffee; the spicy smell of home-made sausage meat; the odor of cornmeal johnny-cakes, white as snow in the middle, baked brown on both sides, ready to split and be deluged with "white gravy."

Cap'n Jonah heard Sarah go to the front stairs and call Helmford. Then she went to the door of the covered porch and shouted for Orrin and Tom. There followed a murmur of voices below; then came Pearl's light step upon the back stairs.

"Cap'n Jonah!" she called outside his door.

"Whatever!" groaned the old seaman. "Hullo! Ouch! Ain't so spry this mornin' as us'al, Pearly."

Pearl heard his bed creak and knew he was not up. She opened the door and peered in.

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah! is anything the matter?"

"Guess so. Rheumatics, Pearly. They've got me laid by the heels."

"Dear me! So bad you can't get up?" queried the girl.

"I'll get up by and by. Don't bother 'bout me. Ouch! Whatever!"

"My! you must be pretty bad, Cap'n Jonah. Do you want I should do anything for you?"

"Not a thing, my gal," declared the independent old skipper. "I ain't quite scuttled yet--no sir! I'll warp myself out o' here by noon. Don't you fuss none."

Pearly returned below stairs and before sitting down to eat her own breakfast she arranged a tray for Cap'n Jonah and carried it up to him. She propped him up in bed with a chair and pillows at his back, and helped him get the tray in position. She brought him a warmer quilt from her own room.

"It's cold enough in here to freeze the coffee 'fore you can drink it," Pearl declared. "Let me wrap this around you, Cap'n Jonah."

"Thank you, my gal," said the old man. "I won't forgit your kindness."

"Nor I won't forget yours," she whispered before she left him, and patted his mahogany cheek lightly.

It was like a stroke to Cap'n Jonah's heart--this last. He thought Pearl was referring to his promise of making her his heir. He was near to being as suspicious about the avariciousness of those around him as was Eliphalet Truitt.

And good reason he had for that. To live with people like the Pettys was enough to canker the most generous and unsuspicious nature.

"Whatever! I got to see Cap'n Abe. He's my only hope now," murmured the master mariner. "Won't never do for Pearly, poor gal, to be disappointed."

But the girl had no thoughts of a mercenary nature. That Cap'n Jonah should have faced the Pettys and browbeaten them in her behalf was sufficient to fill Pearl's heart with gratitude. She never thought a second time of the old man's threat. In her confusion of mind at the time, she had scarcely apprehended what his speech meant.

What Pearl shrank from most of all this morning was meeting Joe Helmford. When she returned from giving Cap'n Jonah his tray, the boarder was at the table. He greeted her, as he had all, with his customary "good morning." But no smile accompanied it, and he confined his speech during the meal to requests relating to the food.

In fact a pall seemed to hang over the Petty household; and yet the family were less acrimonious and fault-finding than usual. To Pearl they were scrupulously polite, and Sarah Petty more than once expressed her anxiety regarding the absent Cap'n Jonah.

"You'd better step up after breakfast, Orrin, and see if you can do anything for him," Mrs. Petty said. "Uncle Jonah is beginning to feel his years, I shouldn't wonder."

But Orrin slipped out of the house immediately after breakfast without venturing above to Cap'n Jonah's chamber. He felt some awkwardness about appearing before the old man after what had occurred the previous evening.

Of course, the lout could not be expected to confront his great-uncle at such a time; and even Sarah herself felt some unwonted embarrassment in greeting Cap'n Jonah. So it was Pearl who went up to get the tray and to inquire solicitously for a bulletin of health.

She found Cap'n Jonah out of bed and struggling with the crooked mirror and a dull razor. Every morning the old man scrupulously shaved his cheeks and lips. The fringe of gray beard and his hair were carefully brushed as well. The captain always looked as neat as a new pin.

He looked out at her from behind a mask of cold lather and tried to grin cheerfully. "Purty hard scrabblin', Pearly," he remarked. "My fingers are stiffer than a frozen bowline."

"You should have a fire, Cap'n Jonah," she said tenderly. "It's real mean! This is the coldest end of the house anyway. And you have had no warm water."

"Ne'er mind. Don't fuss. I'll be out o' here all right. There'll be a change o' wind before long, my gal."

Pearl did not fully understand him, but she thought the statement likely to be so. At the bottom of the stairs, listening, she found Sarah Petty.

"What's that he says?" demanded the woman in a sharp whisper. "He's goin' to get out o' here?"

"So he says," Pearl replied, scarcely understanding Mrs. Petty's anxiety.

Sarah Petty stepped back, staring at the girl with eyes that glittered like a snake's. She closed the door at the bottom of the stairs with a careful hand.

"Don't you let him do that, Pearl Holden!" she hissed. "You have a care. You'll find it a whole lot better to have me for a friend than an enemy. Now, mind that! You keep Uncle Jonah here."

"Me?" gasped the girl in surprise. "What have I to do with it?"

Mrs. Petty's speech amazed her. Indeed, the treatment accorded her on this morning by all the family greatly puzzled Pearl Holden.

In the first place, the clack of Sarah Petty's tongue seemed to be muffled. The woman scarcely spoke to her, and never to find fault. This was her single outbreak of ill-temper. Orrin, when he came for the can of grease for the harness, which was kept soft behind the kitchen stove, asked her for it with a "please" tacked to the request.

She was sweeping the big lower front hall when Tom came blundering through. She would not have spoken to him, but he would not be denied.

"Say! you ain't goin' to stay mad with me, are you, Pearly?" he asked with a grin.

She looked at him with an angry spark in either eye; but Tom would not be warned.

"Aw, come, now, Pearly!" he said. "You know you like me. I was just foolin'----"

As he approached she backed away into a corner and held the broom straight out before her.

"You keep your foolin' to yourself, Tom Petty!" she cried. "Get away from me!"

"Aw, now, Pearly!" he exclaimed, half laughing and half his ugly self. To be denied made him angry. He seized the handle of the broom.

"Keep away from me!" panted the girl.

Tom was by far the stronger. He quickly wrenched the broom from her hands. Pearl screamed. Tom had his arm around her waist and she was fighting him off with both hands.

"Come on, Pearly! Give us a kiss," he said, still only half in earnest. "Le's you an' me be good friends again."

A door slammed above as though in answer to the girl's half stifled shriek. The quick step of Joe Helmford saved her. Tom uttered an imprecation and flung away the broom. But the boarder, descending the stairs, saw them both--the girl with flaming face and drooping eyes, and the young fellow standing before her in a most suggestive attitude. Helmford went right on without speaking. He thought his appearance had been most inopportune, and that he had interfered in a tender scene between Pearl and Tom.