Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 11

"Ain't it a fact? He's let himself run to seed and get old lookin'.

That's from stayin' ash.o.r.e all his life. It's the feel of a heavin'

deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man's wishbone. Yes, sir! Abe's all right--good man and all that--but he's no sailor,"

Cap'n Amazon added, shaking his head.

"Now, here!" he went on briskly, "we ought to have breakfast, hadn't we? I left that woman Abe has pokin' around here, to dish up; and it's 'most six bells. Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise."

"I'll run to see if the biscuits are done," said the girl; and she hurried to the kitchen ahead of him. Betty Gallup was waiting for her.

"What d'ye think of him?" she whispered anxiously.

"Why, he's splendid!" the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter.

"He's a _character_!"

"Humph! Mebbe. But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now he ain't a man I'd trust. Nothin' a-tall like Cap'n Abe!"

"I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram."

"Humph! How long you knowed Abram Silt? Come here yesterday for the fust time. Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we've knowed Cap'n Abe around here for twenty year and more. Course, he ain't Cardhaven born; but we know him. He's as diff'rent from this pirate that calls himself Cap'n Am'zon Silt as chalk is from cheese."

The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap'n Amazon from the store.

They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe the evening before. She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had. But no, he began spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth.

Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat.

Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a stranger to turn. The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe always sat. He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap.

"Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon. "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?"

Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into the face of the captain. Louise could see the cat actually stiffen with surprise. Then, with a "p-sst-maow!" he leaped down and ran out of the room at high speed.

"What--what do you think of that?" gasped Cap'n Amazon. "The cat's gone crazy!"

The girl was in a gale of laughter. "Of course he hasn't," she said.

"He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face. You can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon."

Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation. "You got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe. I must have surprised the critter. And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt."

"Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise.

"There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the cage hanging in the sunlit window. "What's Abe call him?"

"Jerry."

"And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary. Wouldn't trust n.o.body else, he said, to feed and water him." He rose from the table, leaving his breakfast. "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?"

He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires of the cage. Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger, sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings.

"There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief. "_He_ takes to me all right."

"That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway. She had removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be completely hidden when she had the hat on her head. "That don't show nothin'," she repeated grimly.

Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why don't it, I want to know?"

"'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind."

"Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone.

"It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again.

"I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced. "Didn't want to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird. Jerry's used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the slats of the cage for him to perch on. He just thinks you're Cap'n Abe."

She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes. Cap'n Amazon came slowly back to his chair. "Blind!" he repeated. "I want to know! Both his deadlights out. Too bad! Too bad!"

He did not seem to care for any more breakfast.

Footsteps in the store soon brought the subst.i.tute shopkeeper to his feet again.

"I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled. "I'd ought to hauled in the gang-plank when we set down."

He disappeared into the store and almost at once a shrill feminine voice greeted him as "Cap'n Abe." Vastly abused, Louise arose and softly followed to the store.

"Give me coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe.

I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em for markers in their garden. I want--land sakes! Who--what---- _Where's_ Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't here just now," Cap'n Amazon replied. "I'm his brother.

You'll have to pick out the needle you want. I can find and count the clothespins, I guess. Two dozen, you say?"

"Land sakes! Cap'n Abe gone away? Don't seem possible."

"There's a hull lot of seemin' impossible things in this world that come to pa.s.s just the same," the subst.i.tute storekeeper made answer, with some tartness. "Here's the needle drawer. Find what you want, ma'am."

Louise was frankly spying. She saw that the customer was a lanky young woman in a sunbonnet. When she dropped the bonnet back upon her narrow shoulders with an impatient jerk, the better to see the needles, it was revealed that her thin, light hair was drawn so tightly back from her face that it actually seemed to make her pop-eyed.

She had a rather pretty pink and white complexion, and aside from the defect of hairdressing might have been attractive. She possessed a thin and aquiline nose, however, the nostrils fairly quivering with eagerness and curiosity.

"Land sakes!" she was saying. "I know Cap'n Abe's been talkin' of goin' away--the longest spell! But so suddent--'twixt night and mornin' as ye might say------"

"Exactly," said Cap'n Amazon dryly, and went on counting the pins from the box into a paper sack.

"What 'bout the girl that's come here? That movie actress?" asked the young woman with added sharpness in her tone. "What you going to do with _her_?"

Cap'n Amazon came back to the counter and even his momentary silence was impressive. He favored the customer with a long stare.

"Course, 'tain't none o' my business. I was just askin'----"

"You made an int'restin' discovery, then, ma'am," he said. "It _ain't_ any of your business. Me and my niece'll get along pretty average well, I shouldn't wonder. Anything else, ma'am? I see the needle's two cents and the pins two cents a dozen. Six cents in all."

"Well, I run a book with Cap'n Abe. I ain't got no money with me,"

said the young woman defiantly.