Mr. Wicker's Window Part 3

"Eat up now, young man," Becky Boozer advised, every red rose and feather accenting her words, "for Mr. Wicker will be wanting to see you when you have done. It's late. Past eight of the clock." She glanced out the window. "It might be just possible that Master Cilley will be pa.s.sing by before long for a midmorning snack and here I am gossiping with you instead of getting on with my work."

Chris ate with a will, looking around as he chewed. The spotless brick floor and the starched curtains at the windows, the s.h.i.+ning copper pans hung beside the huge fireplace, were proof of Becky Boozer's housekeeping.

"Don't you have an icebox?" Chris asked, his mouth full.

"What may that be?" Becky asked sharply.

"To keep the food cool," Chris answered.

Becky stopped to consider this, her hands on her hips. "We have a larder on the cool side of the house, if that be what you mean," she told him, nodding. "Keeps the food pretty well up to April or May.

Then the heat makes everything go. Oh! This heat! Prosperity, Maryland, where I come from, and on the sea coast as it is, was never like this!"

A table with a wooden tub and dishes stacked nearby caught Chris's eye. Buckets of water stood beneath the table, and presently Becky Boozer took off a small pot of steaming water from a hook above the fire, poured it in the tub, and dipped cold water from one of the buckets into it.

What a system! Chris thought as he watched Becky busy with her dishes, thinking of the neat white kitchen he knew at home.

Aloud he said: "If you had a little wooden trough that led from that tub out through the window there, you could pull out a bung when you were ready and the water would run outdoors. It would save you carrying that great tub about, when you are in a hurry."

Becky Boozer rested her soapy hands on the edge of the tub and looked at him admiringly over her shoulder.

"I would never have thought it," she said, "by the look of you. Never in this world. You have brains, young lad, that's what you have. A better idea than that I never heard! Indeed, it is just what I have been a-needin' since years, and that simple I might have thought it out myself! I shall set Master Cilley to work on it when he comes.

He's right handy with tools, is Ned Cilley."

At this moment a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced her huge bulk to the door with a welcoming smile.

A little man scarcely higher than Becky's barrel waist, with a rolling sea gait and twinkling blue eyes, bounced into the room and strained up on tiptoe toward Miss Boozer's blus.h.i.+ng cheek. Chris, behind the opened door, had not yet been perceived.

"Come now, Becky me love!" shouted Cilley the sailor in a good-humored roar, "How can I start the day right 'thout a kiss from my Boozer?"

Becky blushed and simpered and cast down her eyes. "Get along with you, Cilley! What a way to behave," she admonished, delighted and abashed. "See--there's company here."

She pushed her suitor off with an elephantine shove and gestured to Chris.

Chris was feeling the contagion of laughter catching up with him again at the scene he had watched, and was glad when the sailor turned and came over to where he sat.

"A visitor, eh? Well, well. Off a s.h.i.+p?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"No--no!" Becky put in quickly, and gave Chris a look. "No. He is a friend of the master's, from--" she searched her mind--"from another part of the country. He got here last night and slept late, as you see."

"Indeed and indeed!" said the sailor, settling himself comfortably, and as if for a long stay, in his chair and observing Chris through his keen blue eyes. "Well, young man," he announced genially, "I am Cilley," he said, and stretched out a hard brown hand.

"Christopher Mason," Chris said in return, and they solemnly shook hands, taking account of each other as men do when they meet.

"I shall sit here, Mistress Becky, by your leave," Cilley called out, as if Becky Boozer were a mile away, "to keep this lad company, as it were."

"So you shall!" Becky answered warmly, smiling broadly, wrinkles of pleasure at the corners of her eyes. "And could I tempt you with a morsel, Master Cilley?"

Ned Cilley appeared to consider this invitation from all sides before he gave his reply, c.o.c.king his head on one side like a parrot as he reflected. Finally, he answered.

"How could I refuse when I know your fame as a cook?" he said with a smile at Becky and a wink at Chris, and put his h.o.r.n.y forefinger and thumb the distance of a thread apart. "But a crumb, Mistress Becky. A morsel. A taste. Just to pay my respects to your art, as it were."

Then such a commotion took place in the kitchen. Chris watched flabbergasted, as Becky set before Cilley a meat pie, a large cheese, fruit preserves, two kinds of bread, cakes and cookies, latticed tarts, and pickles in jars. And with a beaming smile Becky drew from a cask a jugful of ale which she set down on the table with a thud.

"Just a morsel, Master Cilley," she said, adding in a coaxing tone, "Try just a taste, to please me."

Ned Cilley, his eyes winking with antic.i.p.ation and smacking his lips, attacked the meat pie and the cheese, tarts and pickles, with a will.

"Here--try this," he urged Chris, heaping the boy's plate as lavishly as his own, and the two ate in silence and gusto while Becky stood by with roses and feathers bobbing.

"You must keep your strength up, Ned Cilley," she admonished, "for 'tis a hard life that you lead," she warned him.

Ned paused long enough to swallow. "Aye, that it is, that it is!" he agreed, wagging his head, champing his jaws, and digging into the food. "A hard life, has a sailor," Ned said with an effort at sorrow, which failed signally, and he took a great draught of the ale.

After a while Cilley slowed, wiped his mouth with his hand and leaned back in his chair, rolling a dazed eye at the anxious face of the waiting Becky Boozer.

"Mistress Boozer," he announced, "I am a new man." He heaved a sigh of repletion. "You have saved me again. Ah! Mistress Becky, what a treasure you are!"

Becky curtsied and giggled, her fabulous hat shaking as if with a secret all its own. Just then a bell tinkled, at the end of the kitchen pa.s.sage.

"That will be the master," Becky said, bustling away. Then she turned.

"I shall be back, Master Cilley! I pray you, do not leave!"

Chris seized his opportunity. "Please, Master Cilley," he asked, leaning across the empty plates in his interest, "Why does she wear that queer hat?"

Master Cilley c.o.c.ked an eye at the boy before him, picked comfortably at his teeth with an iron nail which he took from his pocket, and loosened his belt buckle.

"Ah!" he said, "So you've not heard? Quick, then, I shall tell you, for that is truly a tale."

The sailor stretched back in his chair, one hand holding the mug of ale. His short nose and red, wind-burned cheeks seemed to share the joke with his eyes as he finally leaned forward across the table with an air of conspiracy.

CHAPTER 5

"Well now," began Cilley, "that's a tale that not everyone knows, don't you see. And Mistress Becky would not care to be reminded of it, mark you, for reasons I shall shortly tell."

His eyes, humorous as they were, took on a shrewdness under their sandy brows as if judging the character of the boy before him and his ability to keep a secret.

"First and foremost," he said, "You had best know who I am." He leaned back and hooked his thumbs under his armpits in a prideful gesture.

"My lad," said Ned Cilley, thrusting out his chin, "I am a member of the _Mirabelle's_ crew!"

"The _Mirabelle_!" Chris exclaimed, "Why--that's the s.h.i.+p in the bottle!"

"Aye," agreed Cilley, nodding sagely, "The model of it's in a bottle right enough, since it's meself that made it, the last trip home from the Chiny Seas."