Captain Pott's Minister Part 14

"Josiah Pott! If you come over here to talk that nonsense you can go right back."

"I really come on another matter. I want you to come over and keep house for me and another man. We're living on the old place, and it ain't what you'd call hum sweet hum for two males to live alone in a big house like mine. Thought maybe you wouldn't mind keeping the decks swabbed and the galley full of pervisions if I'd only pay you the same as you're getting here. I'd----"

"That will be enough!"

"Thought maybe 'twould."

"I'll not listen to another word from you!" exclaimed the shocked Miss Pipkin. The expression on her face gave the Captain the feeling that he had dived into icy water, and had come up suddenly against a hidden beam.

"Two of you! And you want me to do your work! Well, of all the nerve!"

"I ain't told you yet who the other feller is," suggested the Captain.

"I don't care if he's an angel from heaven. I'd think you'd be ashamed of yourself to come here and speak of such a thing."

"But I ain't ashamed, Clemmie. A drowning man is willing to grab the first straw he sees. Listen to me, Clemmie," he pleaded, as she turned to leave the room.

"Me listen to you proposing for me to come over to Little River and start talk that would ruin the town? Not if I know what Clemmie Pipkin's doing."

"I tell you I ain't proposing to you, I'm just asking you. As far as that town goes, a few things more for it to talk about can't do her no harm."

Miss Pipkin paused on the threshold to give a parting shot, but the Captain spoke first and spiked her guns.

"The other feller happens to be the new parson."

Her expression changed. Preachers had long been her specialty at the Poor Farm, and she knew exactly the care and food they needed.

"What was that you said, Josiah?"

"The other feller living with me is the minister at the brick church."

"The minister living with you!"

"Yes."

"With you? But you ain't got religion."

"I cal'late that's the safest guess you ever made, Clemmie, but just now it's cooking, and not religion, that's bothering me."

"Lan' sakes! You ain't trying to cook for the minister, be you?" she asked incredulously.

"You put it just right, I'm trying to. I don't know how long he'll be able to stand it, but he won't go nowhere else."

"Poor thing!" she exclaimed. "Poor thing!"

"Them's my sentiments, too, Clemmie."

"And no doubt he's a frail creature, too, and ought to have the best of care. So many of them are that way."

A violent fit of coughing seized the Captain.

"Lan' sakes! Now, what's the matter with you? Been going out without your rubbers, I'll warrant. Men are worse than babies when left to themselves. I do believe they'd die if the women-folks didn't look after them once in a while."

"We sartin would," choked out the Captain. "Do you suppose you can arrange it to come over?"

"When do you want me?"

"Right now. To-day. I come special for you."

"I'll go," decided Miss Pipkin impulsively. "It's plain as day that it's my duty. I am getting wore out in this place. They've been putting the work of three on me, and I ain't got the strength."

"It ain't right, Clemmie, for you to be wearing yourself out in this kind of work. G.o.d intended you for something better. I ain't proposing,"

he hastily added, lest his bird take the sudden notion to wing her way back into the bush.

Miss Pipkin gave him a quick look, and left the room. She very soon returned carrying a bundle beneath one arm, and clutching a bulging telescope suit-case in the other hand. From one end of the bundle protruded the head of a cat.

"What in tarnation you got in there, Clemmie?" asked the seaman, pointing toward the bundle.

"You didn't think I was going to leave my Tommy behind to be starved and abused, did you?"

"Hadn't thought about that," meekly admitted the Captain, as he took the telescope.

"Have you got a trunk to send over?"

"No."

Miss Pipkin breathed a deep sigh of relief as they pa.s.sed out of the gates. She looked back at the weather-beaten old buildings of the County Farm into which ten years of her life had gone. But she felt no pang on leaving.

The Captain kept up a constant stream of conversation on the way down to the wharf. Suddenly, Miss Pipkin stopped, and suspiciously eyed the seaman.

"Josiah, how are we going back?"

"In my _Jennie P._"

"In your what?"

"In my power-boat, the _Jennie P._"

"Josiah Pott! You know I ain't been aboard a boat for more than twenty year, and I ain't going to start out on the thing, whatever-you-call-it!"

It appeared as if the Captain would have to come another day, in another sort of vehicle, to carry home his newly-found housekeeper. He again led trumps.

"The minister come all the way over with me to get you."

"He did?"

"Sartin did."

"Poor thing! He's been treated so scandalously that he's willing to do 'most anything. Well, it may be the death of me, but I've got this far, and I may as well go on."