Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/505

 minutes he kept up an incessant scolding of Laura.

“Is that inquest over?” he resumed.

“I don’t know anything about it, papa.”

“Has Carlton not been up?”

“No,” replied Laura, bending to smooth the pillow under her father’s feet, lest the sudden accession of colour, which she felt rush to her cheeks, should be noticed. In doing this, she unwittingly touched the worst foot in the worst part; and the unhappy captain, one of the most impatient to bear pain that the gout ever came to, shrieked, shook his stick, and finally let off some of what Miss Laura was in the habit of calling his quarter-deck language.

“Papa, I am very sorry; my hand slipped,” she deprecatingly said.

“Did you ever have the gout, Miss Laura Chesney?”

“No, papa.”

“Then perhaps you’ll exercise a little care when you are about those who do have it, and not let your hand ‘slip.’ Slip, indeed! it’s all you are good for, to agonise suffering people. What do you do here? Why don’t you let Jane come up?”

“Why, papa, you called me up.”

“That cantankering piano! I’ll send for a man to-morrow, and he shall value it, and take it away. What’s the reason that Carlton doesn’t come? He’s getting above his business, is that fellow. He has not been here all day long. I have a great mind to turn him off, and call in one of the Greys. I wish I had done so when we first came here; they are attentive. You shall write him a note, and tell him not to put his foot inside my gate any more.”

Laura’s heart turned sick. Sick lest her father should execute his threat.

“He could not be dismissed without being paid,” she said, in a low tone, hoping the suggestion might have weight; and the captain growled.

“Has Pompey come back?” he began again, while Laura stood submissively before him, not daring to leave unless dismissed.

“Not yet, papa. He has scarcely had time to come back yet.”

“But I say he has had time,” persistently interrupted the captain. “He is stopping loitering over that precious inquest, listening to what’s going on there. One fool makes many. I’ll loiter him with my stick when he returns. Give me that.”

The captain rapped his stick violently on a table in his vicinity, pretty nearly causing the saucer of jelly which stood there to fly off it. Laura handed him the saucer and teaspoon.

“Who made this jelly?” he asked, when he had tasted it.

“I—I dare say it was Jane,” she replied, with some hesitation, for Laura kept herself entirely aloof from domestic duties. She knew no more than the man in the moon how they went on, or who accomplished them, except that it must lie between Jane and the maidservant.

“Is it made of calves’ feet, or cow-heels, I wonder?” continued the captain, growling and tasting. “If that’s not made of cow-heels, I’m a story-teller,” he decided, in another minute. “What does Jane mean by it? I told her I would not touch jelly that was made of cow-heel. Wretched stuff!”

“Then, papa, I believe you are wrong, for I think Jane ordered some calves’ feet a day or two ago,” protested Laura. But she only so spoke to appease him; and the irascible old sailor, somewhat mollified, resumed his pursuit of the jelly.

“What did Clarice say?” he asked.

“Clarice?” repeated Laura, opening her eyes in wonder. Not wonder only at the question, but at hearing so much as that name mentioned by her father.

The ex-sailor opened his, and fixed them on his daughter. “I ask you what Clarice said?”

“Said when, papa?”

“When? Why, when Jane heard from her the other morning. Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

“Jane did not hear from Clarice, papa.”

“Jane did, young lady. Why should she tell me she did, if she didn’t? So you want to keep it from me, do you?”

“Indeed, papa,” persisted Laura, “she did not hear from her. I am quite sure that she did not. Had she heard from her she would have told me.”

A cruel twinge took the captain’s right foot.

“You be shot!” he shrieked. “And serve you right for seeking to deceive your father. A pretty puppet I should be in your hands but for Jane! Here, put this down. And now you may go.”

Laura replaced the saucer on the table, and went back to her sisters, thankful for the release.

“Papa is so cross to-night,” she exclaimed.

“He is finding fault with everything.”

“Illness does make a person irritable, especially a man,” spoke Jane, soothingly, ever ready to extenuate her father. “And papa, you know, has been accustomed to exact implicit obedience in his own ship, just as if he were captain of a little kingdom.”

“I think the sailors must have had a fine time of it,” said Laura; and Jane forbore to inquire in what light she spoke it; she could