Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/168

148 kinds at his. He is terribly anxious, for some reason, to get those hard, lean fingers of his  on the property.”

He puffed at his pipe for quite a little while in silence, then spoke again.

“That’s a dangerous kind of man, Billy Wentworth, the most risky kind a community  can have. A man who thinks he’s smart and isn’t—that’s about as bad a combination as can  be made. Jarreth has a reputation to live up to, for being shrewd and quick and able to  get the best of people; he nearly lost that reputation and he will stop at nothing to get it back. He doesn’t mean any harm, he hardly means to be really dishonest; but he’s so bound to  prove himself smart that he will let anybody  who is more of a rascal than he is, make a fool  of him. I’m not easy in my mind when I think of him and of that ‘friend’ of his that  he’s so bound to prove is straight. No, I don’t like it.”

And when Billy went home to supper he left the Captain still sitting on the bench, evidently turning his anxious thoughts to the same  matter, if one could judge by the way he  smoked his pipe in short, troubled puffs.

The days went by, the poppies drooped their