Dab Kinzer Part 14

"In ink," added Annie. "Just as they drowned my poor cuffs and collars."

CHAPTER X

A CRUISE IN "THE SWALLOW."

"Look at Dabney Kinzer," said Jenny Walters to her mother, in church, the next morning. "Did you ever see anybody's hair as smooth as that?"

Smooth it was, certainly; and he looked, all over, as if he had given all the care in the world to his personal appearance. How was Annie Foster to guess that he had gotten himself up so unusually on her account? She did not guess it; but when she met him at the church-door, after service, she was careful to address him as "Mr. Kinzer," and that made poor Dabney blush to his very eyes.

"There!" he exclaimed: "I know it."

"Know what?" asked Annie.

"Know what you're thinking."

"Do you, indeed?"

"Yes: you think I'm like the crabs."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"You think I was green enough till you spoke to me, and now I'm boiled red in the face."

Annie could not help laughing,--a little, quiet, Sunday-morning sort of a laugh; but she was beginning to think her brother's friend was not a bad specimen of a Long Island "country boy."

She briskly turned away the small remains of that conversation from crabs and their color; but she told her mother, on their way home, she was sure Dabney would be a capital a.s.sociate for Ford.

That young gentleman was tremendously of the same opinion. He had come home, the previous evening, from a long conference with Dab, brimful of the proposed yachting cruise; and his father had freely given his consent, much against the inclinations of Mrs. Foster.

"My dear," said the lawyer, "I feel sure a woman of Mrs. Kinzer's unusual good sense would not permit her son to go out in that way if she did not feel safe about him. He has been brought up to it, you know; and so has the colored boy who is to go with them."

"Yes, mother," argued Ford: "there isn't half the danger there is in driving around New York in a carriage."

"There might be a storm," she timidly suggested.

"The horses might run away."

"Or you might get upset."

"So might a carriage."

The end of it all was, however, that Ford was to go, and Annie was more than half sorry she could not go with them. In fact, she said so to Dabney himself, as soon as her little laugh was ended, that Sunday morning.

"Some time or other I'd be glad to have you," replied Dab very politely, "but not this trip."

"Why not?"

"We mean to go right across the bay, and try some fis.h.i.+ng."

"Couldn't I fish?"

"Well, no, I don't think you could."

"Why couldn't I?"

"Because,--well, because, most likely, you'd be too sea-sick by the time we got there."

Just then a low, clear voice, behind Dabney, quietly remarked, "How smooth his hair is!"

Dab's face turned red again.

Annie Foster had heard it as distinctly as he had; and she walked right away with her mother, for fear she should laugh again.

"It's my own hair, Jenny Walters," said Dab almost savagely, as he turned around.

"I should hope it was."

"I should like to know what you go to church for, anyhow."

"To hear people talk about sailing and fis.h.i.+ng. How much do you s'pose a young lady like Miss Foster cares about small boys?"

"Or little girls, either? Not much; but Annie and I mean to have a good sail before long."

"Annie and I!"

Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever, as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual.

There were several sharp things on the very tip or her tongue, but she was too much put out and vexed to try to say them just then.

Dab made the rest of his way home without any further haps or mishaps. A sail on the bay was nothing so new or wonderful for him to look forward to, and so that Sunday went by a good deal like all his other Sundays.

As for Ford Foster, on the contrary, his mind was in a stew and turmoil all day. In fact, just after tea that evening, his father asked him,--

"What book is that you are reading, Ford?"

"Captain Cook's Voyages."

"And the other, in your lap?"

"Robinson Crusoe."

"Well, you might have worse books than they are, that's a fact, even for Sunday, though you ought to have better; but which of them do you and Dabney Kinzer mean to imitate to-morrow?"

"Crusoe!" promptly responded Ford.