Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/263

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CAPTAIN CHRISTY
249

"It makes me want to cry!" Joyce told herself, while she hurried along, her cheeks glowing and her fists clenched. "Taken to her bed! That old Dragon! Ugh!"

When she had turned a corner, the captain moved heavily back to the steps and bent again to his task of spattering.

Once he straightened up, to look dreamily toward the harbor, where aslant a sunken ridgepole and tumbled chimney rose a well-beloved topmast.

"Hum! That sailorman," he mused,—"Ulysses, she said it was,—would n't mind doin' like him. … Left his wife, though, did n't he? Humph! Not for me, no more."

The careful process of maculation finished, he made a barrier of two kegs and a plank, with large letters—"P-A-I-N-T"—to warn a neighborhood whose habit of calling there had ceased years ago.

When he entered, a peevish voice issued from the open door of the bedchamber.

"I s'pose you expect me to sleep all this time.— Tap-tap-tap! rap-rap-rap!—what were you puttering about?"