Thankful's Inheritance Part 22

"Well, John?" he began.

"Well, Captain?"

"Have you--have you made up your mind yet?"

Kendrick turned over, with his foot, a stone in the path.

"I--" he paused and turned the stone back again. Then he drew a long breath. "I must make it up," he said, "and I can do it as well now as a week later, I suppose. Wherever I go there will be a risk, a big risk.

Captain Bangs, I'll take that risk here. If you are willing to let me have that office of yours for six months at the figure you have named--and I think you are crazy to do it--I will send for my trunk and my furniture and begin to--look out of the window."

Captain Obed was delighted. "Shake, John," he exclaimed. "I'm tickled to death. And I'll tell you this: If you can't get a client no other way I'll--I'll break into the meetin'-house and steal a pew or somethin'.

Then you can defend me. Eh . . . And now what about a place for you to eat and sleep?" he added, after a moment.

The young man seemed to find the question as hard to answer as the other.

"I like it here," he admitted. "I like it very much indeed. But I must economize and the few hundred dollars I have sc.r.a.ped together won't--"

He was interrupted. Emily Howes appeared at the corner of the house behind them.

"Supper is ready," she called cheerfully.

Both men turned to look at her. She was bareheaded and the western sun made her profile a dainty silhouette, a silhouette framed in the spun gold of her hair.

"John's comin', Miss Emily," answered the captain. "He'll be right there."

Emily waved her hand and hurried back to the dining-room door. Mr.

Kendrick kicked the stone into the gra.s.s.

"I think I may as well remain here, for the present at least," he said.

"After all, there is such a thing as being too economical. A chap can't always make a martyr of himself, even if he knows he should."

The next morning Mrs. Barnes, over at the village on a marketing expedition, met Captain Bangs on his way to the postoffice.

"Oh, Cap'n," she said, "I've got somethin' to tell you. 'Tain't bad news this time; it's good. Mr. Heman Daniels has changed his mind. He's goin'

to keep his room and board with me just as he's been doin'. Isn't that splendid!"

The sewing circles and the club and the noon and evening groups at the postoffice had two new subjects for verbal dissection during the next fortnight. This was, in its way, a sort of special Providence, for this was the dull season, when there were no more wrecks alongsh.o.r.e or schooners aground on the bars, and the boarders and cottagers from the cities had not yet come to East Wellmouth. Also the opening of the High Cliff House was getting to be a worn-out topic. So Emily Howes, her appearance and behavior, and John Kendrick, HIS behavior and his astonis.h.i.+ng recklessness in attempting to wrest a portion of the county law practice from Heman Daniels, were welcomed as dispensations and discussed with gusto.

Emily came through the gossip mill ground fine, but with surprisingly little chaff. She was "pretty as a picture," all the males agreed upon that point. And even the females admitted that she was "kind of good-lookin'," although Hannah Parker's diagnosis that she was "declined to be consumptic" and Mrs. Larkin's that she was older than she "made out to be," had some adherents. All agreed, however, that she knew how to run a boarding-house and that she was destined to be the "salvation"

of Thankful Barnes' venture at the Cap'n Abner place.

Certainly she did prove herself to possess marked ability as a business manager. Quietly, and without undue a.s.sertion, she reorganized the affairs of the High Cliff House. No one detected any difference in the quality of the meals served there, in their variety or ample sufficiency. But, little by little, she took upon herself the buying of supplies, the regulation of accounts, the prompt payment of bills and the equally prompt collection of board and room rent. Thankful found the cares upon her shoulders less and less heavy, and she was more free to do what she was so capable of doing, that is, superintend the cooking and the housekeeping.

But Thankful herself was puzzled.

"I don't understand it," she said. "I've always had to look out for myself, and others, too. There ain't been a minute since I can remember that I ain't had somebody dependent upon me. I cal'lated I could run a boardin'-house if I couldn't do anything else. But I'm just as sure as I am that I'm alive that if you hadn't come when you did I'd have run this one into the ground and myself into the poorhouse. I don't understand it."

Emily smiled and put her arm about her cousin's waist. "Oh, no, you wouldn't, Auntie," she said. "It wasn't as bad as that. You needed help, that was all. And you are too generous and kind-hearted. You were always fearful that your boarders might not be satisfied. I have been teaching bookkeeping and accounting, you see, and, besides, I have lived in a family where the princ.i.p.al struggle was to satisfy the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker. This is real fun compared to that."

Thankful shook her head.

"I know," she said; "you always talk that way, Emily. But I'm afraid you'll make yourself sick. You come down here purpose for your health, you know."

Emily laughed and patted Mrs. Barnes' plump shoulder.

"Health!" she repeated. "Why, I have never been as well since I can remember. I couldn't be sick here, in this wonderful place, if I tried.

Do you think I look ill? . . . Oh, Mr. Daniels!" addressing the lawyer, who had just entered the dining-room, "I want your opinion, as a--a specialist. Auntie is afraid I am ill. Don't you think I look about as well as anyone could look?"

Heman bowed. "If my poor opinion is worth anything," he observed, "I should say that to find fault with your appearance, Miss Howes, would be like venturing to--er---paint the lily, as the saying is. I might say more, but--ahem--perhaps I had better not."

Judging by the young lady's expression he had said quite enough already.

"Idiot!" she exclaimed, after he had left the room. "I ask him a sensible question and he thinks it necessary to answer with a silly compliment. Thought I was fis.h.i.+ng for one, probably. Why will men be such fools--some men?"

Mr. Daniels' opinion concerning his professional rival was asked a good many times during that first fortnight. He treated the subject as he did the rival, with condescending toleration. It was quite plain that he considered his own position too secure to be shaken. In fact, his feeling toward John Kendrick seemed to be a sort of kindly pity.

"He appears to be a very well-meaning young man," he said, in reply to one of the questions. "Rash, of course; very young men are likely to be rash--and perhaps more hopeful than some of us older and--ahem--wiser persons might be under the same circ.u.mstances. But he is well-meaning and persevering. I have no doubt he will manage to pick up a few crumbs, here and there. I may be able to throw a few in his way. There are always cases--ah--which I can't--or don't wish to--accept."

When this remark was repeated to Captain Obed the latter sniffed.

"Humph!" he observed, "I don't know what they are. I never see a case Heman wouldn't accept, if there was as much as seventy-five cents in it. If bananas was a nickel a bunch the only part he'd throw in anybody else's way would be the skins."

John, himself, did not seem to mind or care what Mr. Daniels or anyone else said. He wrote a letter to New York and, in the course of time, a second-hand desk, a few chairs, and half a dozen cases of law books arrived by freight and were installed in the ex-barber-shop. The local sign-painter perpetrated a sign with "John Kendrick, Attorney-at-law"

upon it in gilt letters, and the "looking out of the window" really began.

And that was about all that did begin for days and days. Each morning or afternoon, Sundays excepted, Captain Bangs would drop in at the office and find no one there, no one but the tenant, that is. The latter, seated behind the desk, with a big sheepskin-bound volume spread open upon it, was always glad to see his visitor. Their conversations were characteristic.

"h.e.l.lo, John!" the captain would begin. "How are the clients comin'?"

"Don't know, Captain. None of them has as yet got near enough so that I could see how he comes."

"Humph! I want to know. Mr. John D. Jacob Vanderbilt ain't cruised in from Newport to put his affairs in your hands? Sho'! He's pretty short-sighted, ain't he?"

"Very. He's losing valuable time."

"Well, I expected better things of him, I must say. Ain't gettin'

discouraged, are you, John?"

"No, indeed. If there was much discouragement in my make-up I should have stopped before I began. How is the fish business, Captain?"

"Well, 'tain't what it ought to be this season of the year. Say, John, couldn't you subpoena a school of mackerel for me? Serve an order of the court on them to come into my weirs and answer for their sins, or somethin' like that? I'd be willin' to pay you a fairly good fee."

On one occasion the visitor asked his friend what he found to do all the long days. "Don't study law ALL the time, do you, John?" he queried.

Kendrick shook his head. "No," he answered, gravely. "Between studies I enjoy the view. Magnificent view from this window, don't you think?"

Captain Obed inspected the "view." The princ.i.p.al feature in the landscape was Dr. Jameson's cow, pastured in the vacant lot between the doctor's home and the postoffice.