The Green Dolphin
beside him. “The wild ones along the road smell nice, but not like
these. Besides, none of ’em are red.” With delight he pointed toward
the bloom of a giant Jacqueminot.
“So you like red roses, do you?” said Lemmy, letting the hand that had
gripped the urchin’s arm slip slowly down until it clasped the small,
clinging fingers.
“Yes.”
A pause ensued during which each of the combatants sought to recover
his breath.
“Do--do--you like red roses?” the child presently asked, drawing closer
to his captor.
“Yes, I do. I love all colors.” Involuntarily Lemmy gave the hand he
held a sympathetic squeeze.
Instantly the child smiled up at him.
“How would you like to have a red rose?” suddenly interrogated the
owner of the garden.
“One of these!” With shining eyes the small boy motioned in the
direction of the velvety flowers nodding in the breeze.
“Any one you choose. You can pick it out yourself. How’ll that do? Then
I’ll pin it on your shirt. What’s your name, sonny?”
“Danny Watson.”
“Wal’, Daniel, you certainly fell into a lion’s den when you came here.
Lucky for you I didn’t eat you up.”
The child laughed merrily.
“Fortunately there’s tame lions same’s there’s wild ones,” went on
Lemuel, whimsically. “Mebbe you’ve seen ’em at the circus.”
The boy’s eyes grew big and bright and he nodded.
“Well, that’s the kind I am; I’m a tame lion,” explained the Captain.
“I roar just the same as a wild one, but when it comes to bitin’ I stop
just short of it. Still, you don’t want to bank on that, ’cause some
day I might. Now s’pose after I’ve pinned this rose on you an’ given
you a cookie you an’ me set out to find your dad. He may be worryin’
about you. Have you any notion where you left him?”
“Round the curve of the beach.”
“My soul!” Lemmy ejaculated. “That’s quite a stretch of ground for your
little legs to cover. Ain’t you tired?”
“Kinder.”
“I reckon you are. Did you ever ride pig-a-back?”
“Dad often carries me that way.”
“You know how to mount up, then, don’t you? Keep a tight hold round my
neck so’st you won’t fall, Danny boy. I’ll ride you part way down the
shore. You can play you’re ridin’ a lion.”
“But you ain’t a lion,” objected the child, as with two soft arms he
obediently clasped Lemuel. “Lions are cross.”
“Warn’t I cross?”
“Only at first.”
“That’s because I’m a tame lion,” grinned the Captain.
It was fully an hour later when Lemmy, hot and exhausted from trudging
through the sand, returned to find Asaph Holmes awaiting him.
“Where in thunder have you been?” called his visitor impatiently. “You
told me I’d find you right here in the garden. I’ve been hangin’ round
with this bucket of fertilizer goodness knows how long.”
“I meant to be here, an’ I’d oughter been,” responded Lemuel. “The
whole mornin’s gone an’ I’ve nothin’ to show for it. Look at these
weeds. Did you ever see such a jungle of ’em?”
He indicated a few microscopic shoots of clover.
“Where were you?”
“Trouncin’ a small boy I found in the garden.”
“The scalawag! I hope you gave it to him good.”
“Yes, I did--that is--well, you see he was such a mite of a
critter--too little to shake. Besides, he liked flowers.” Then catching
sight of Asaph’s twinkling eyes he blustered: “But I walloped him, the
rascal! Don’t you fear I didn’t. He won’t be meddlin’ again with my
roses.”
In this prediction he was fully justified. Little Danny Watson would
have been drawn and quartered before he would have harmed a petal of
Lemuel Gill’s flowers.
CHAPTER XIII
For another week Althea wrestled heroically and silently with the
complicated problems the Dolphin presented, relying for aid on the
inadequate assistance of her husband and Lemuel Gill and the sporadic
visits of Peggy Davidson and the young doctor; then one morning, after
passing a sleepless night, during which twinges from a rheumatic
shoulder warned her of excessive fatigue, she observed at breakfast:
“I wouldn’t wonder, Asaph, but I’d have to get a woman in to help with
the tea. This bein’ in all places at once ain’t provin’ as easy as you
might think. With Peggy dashin’ in only haphazard I’ve nobody I can
actually rely on to bear a hand.”
“Ain’t you got me an’ Lemmy?”
“To be sure I have,” amended his wife with haste. “Still, as I’ve often
told you, men ain’t like women. Furthermore, we’ve no right to be
draggin’ Lemuel Gill here every afternoon to tote tea.”
“Pooh! Lemuel don’t care. He might’s well be doin’ that as anythin’
else. If he warn’t at the Dolphin he’d just be moggin’ round at home
weedin’ or else settin’ down on the beach with Zeke Barker. I’ve a
notion he enjoys comin’ here. He’s struck up quite an acquaintance with
some of the folks--that old Mr. Haverford, for instance, an’ the woman
from out West that raises prize dahlias.”
“Notwithstandin’ that, we’ve no claim to pin him down to comin’ day in
an’ day out,” persisted Althea. “Had I a woman to help he’d likely feel
freer to stay away when he wanted to.”
“I s’pose he might,” conceded Asaph, to whom the thought of Lemmy at
leisure to devote himself to horticulture while he himself toiled amid
the teacups did not altogether appeal. “Still, for all that, I don’t
see why we can’t pull along as we are for another spell. Ain’t we
makin’ out all right?”
Althea hedged. She was too proud to confess thus early in her Dolphinic
career that she was tired. Besides, fatigue was not her sole reason for
the move to which she was so diplomatically leading up.
“Oh, of course we’re makin’ out,” she answered. “Still, I believe
’twould be wiser to be breakin’ in a woman. S’pose I was to be sick?”
“Lemmy an’ me could bridge the gulf, I reckon, same’s we did before.”
“You had Miss Davidson an’ the Doctor to turn to then.”
“Not at first.”
“Well, you couldn’t be goin’ on like you did for long. Folks are
willin’ to take a chowder in place of tea for a joke; but when it
comes to doin’ it right along they’d balk. I’m moral certain, lookin’
at it from every angle, ’twould be better to get a woman in. You see,
servin’ tea with all the fuss an’ frills city folks demand ain’t like
dishin’ up a bean supper at the church. I could feed a hundred people
there in half the time it takes me to putter round with these mites
of sandwiches, morsels of lemon, an’ cinnamon toast. Then, too, the
china’s delicate to wash an’--”
“I said from the first that china was an idiotic investment,”
interrupted Asaph, manifesting unwonted asperity. “If there’s any sight
in the world more foolish than one of those silly teacups, thin as
vanity an’ not holdin’ more’n one good swallow, I’ve yet to see it.”
“That’s what folks use.”
“Wal’, they’re jolly welcome to,” was the grim retort. “I wouldn’t be
hired to have my drink turned out into any such egg-shell.”
“It may be thin--I ain’t denyin’ it is,” admitted Althea, who sensed
nothing was to be gained by a display of irritation. “But for all that
it seems to wear uncommon well. So far not a piece of it has been
broken.”
“I know that,” bridled Asaph. “An’ why? ’Cause ever since that crockery
crossed our threshold neither Lemmy nor me have drawed one comfortable
breath.”
In spite of her annoyance Althea laughed.
“If I got in a woman you could,” was her instant response.
“Mebbe.”
“Besides, with a capable person to leave in the kitchen, I could keep a
closer eye on what was goin’ on out front.”
“You mean you’d have more chance to visit with the people,” amended the
man shrewdly.
“I mean I could be surer they were gettin’ what they wanted,” retorted
Althea with chilling dignity.
Her clear-sighted husband greeted the explanation with a significant
chuckle.
“Wal’, have it your own way,” said he good-humoredly. “The Dolphin’s
yours to run as you please. I don’t care a hang what you do. Only where
could you find a woman, should you decide to hire one? The folks in
town have their hands full already, I guess, without takin’ on Dolphins
an’ tea drinkin’s.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think of engagin’ any of the village people,” sniffed
Althea. “I wouldn’t take ’em at any price even if they’d come. I’d
rather have somebody from outside who wouldn’t go retailin’ our
business all over Belleport. I don’t care about havin’ every man,
woman, an’ child from here to Provincetown knowin’ exactly how many
visitors we have afternoons an’ how much money we’re makin’--though
fur’s that goes the way Lemmy Gill bets with the fishermen each day on
the number of folks who’ll come keeps the public pretty well informed
of our doin’s.”
“Lemuel don’t harm nothin’.”
“Don’t he traipse down to the shore an’ put up actual cash with that
no-account Zeke Barker about it?”
“He may do a bit of friendly jokin’ with Zeke,” admitted Asaph,
cautiously.
“Friendly jokin’! Now, Asaph, do be honest. Lemmy bets with Zeke
Barker; you know he does. Folks have told me so. It’s regular
gamblin’--a thing that’s against my Christian principles. It oughter be
against yours, too, an’ you a deacon.”
“Oh, Lemmy don’t put up much, just coppers. It’s his way of boomin’
trade.”
“I don’t see how you can be so easy goin’ an’ indulgent about Lemuel
Gill, Asaph. You are never willin’ to measure him up squarely an’
condemn his sins same’s you would other people’s. Bettin’s bettin’, be
it done with coppers, dimes, or dollars, an’ I don’t enjoy feelin’ me
an’ my concerns are the cause of it, innocent though I am of blame.
You’d oughter have conscience enough to object to it, too. But I s’pose
you’d no more own Lemmy was wrong an’ take him to task than you’d cut
off your head. You’re always standin’ up for him.”
Instead of denying the charge Asaph smiled blandly.
“I know it,” agreed he in a placid drawl, “an’ what’s more I figger
I’ll be doin’ it to the last minute of my life. I may even be backin’
him at the judgment throne if he needs backin’.”
“But why won’t you ever admit his shortcomin’s?” interrogated Althea,
impatience crisping the question.
“Admit ’em? What use would there be in that? Ain’t they there stickin’
out like sore thumbs so all the world can see ’em? But law, they don’t
bother me none. Lemmy’s sins are part of him. That’s the difference
twixt you an’ me. I like Lemuel as he is, faults an’ all. You, on the
other hand, are continually itchin’ to cut him to another pattern.”
“Yes, I am,” snapped Althea with spirit.
“You’re silly,” droned Asaph, “an’ wastin’ your energy, for in the
first place you never can do it; an’ in the second, you’re missin’
meanwhile the enjoyment you might be gettin’ out of Lemmy as he is.”
“Oh, I like Lemuel--don’t think I don’t,” his wife hastened to assert.
“I hope you do--hope so indeed. I’d feel almighty sorry if you didn’t,
’cause next to you there ain’t a bein’ on earth I set such store by as
Lemuel Gill.”
Considering the case closed he took up his hat and sauntered toward the
door.
“But about this woman, Asaph,” called Althea, staying him on the
threshold. “You’re willin’ I should get one?”
“Certain I am if you can snare her. But I reckon ’twon’t be easy as you
imagine. How are you goin’ to work to waylay anybody?”
His helpmate directed toward him a Mona Lisa smile, in which
condescension and pity were blended.
“Well, to tell the truth,” responded she, “I’ve somebody in mind
already. When I saw how things were goin’ I wrote up to Sister Sarah to
hunt me up a person in case--”
“Oh!”
Althea ignored the innuendo contained in the monosyllable.
“I thought it would do no harm to have somebody in reserve,” continued
she in an even tone. “Sarah knew of a woman who’d been actin’ as
housekeeper for an invalid gentleman who lives across the street. She
said she was just the caretakin’ person we wanted--capable, an’ smart