Part 8 (2/2)

”Lord-a-ma.s.sy!” cried Nancy Joe.

”Dear heart alive!” muttered Grannie.

”Peter Quilliam!” said Caesar, ”did you say Peter?”

”I did, Mr. Cregeen, Peter Quilliam,” said Philip stoutly, ”my friend Pete, a rough fellow, perhaps, and without much education, but the best-hearted lad in the island. Come now, Caesar, say the word, sir, and make the young people happy.”

He almost foundered over that last word, but Caesar kept him up with a searching look.

”Why, I picked him out of the streets, as you might say,” said Caesar.

”So you did, Mr. Cregeen, so you did. I always thought you were a discerning man, Caesar. What do you say, Grannie? It's Caesar for knowing a deserving lad when he sees one, eh?”

He gave another round of his cunning winks, and Grannie replied, ”Aw, well, it's nothing against either of them anyway.”

Caesar was gitting as straight as a crowbar and as grim as a gannet. ”And when he left me, he gave me imperence and disrespeck.”

”But the lad meant no harm, father,” said Grannie; ”and hadn't you told him to take to the road?”

”Let every bird hatch its own eggs, mother; it'll become you better,”

said Caesar. ”Yes, sir, the lip of Satan and the imperence of sin.”

”Pete!” cried Philip, in a tone of incredulity; ”why, he hasn't a thought about you that isn't out of the Prayer-book.”

Caesar snorted. ”No? Then maybe that's where he's going for his curses.”

”No curses at all,” said Nancy Joe, from the side of the table, ”but a right good lad though, and you've never had another that's been a patch on him.”

Caesar screwed round to her and said severely, ”Where there's geese there's dirt, and where there's women there's talking.” Then turning back to Philip, he said in a tone of mock deference, ”And may I presume, sir--a little question--being a thing like that's general understood--what's his fortune?”

Philip fell back in his chair. ”Fortune? Well, I didn't think that you now----”

”No?” said Caesar. ”We're not children of Israel in the wilderness getting manna dropped from heaven twice a day. If it's only potatoes and herrings itself, we're wanting it three times, you see.”

Do what he would to crush it, Philip could not help feeling a sense of relief. Fate was interfering; the girl was not for Pete. For the first moment since he returned to the kitchen he breathed freely and fully.

But then came the p.r.i.c.k of conscience: he had come to plead for Pete, and he must be loyal; he must not yield; he must exhaust all his resources of argument and persuasion. The wild idea occurred to him to take Caesar by force of the Bible.

”But think what the old book says, Mr. Cregeen, 'take no thought for the morrow'----”

”That's what Johnny Niplightly said, Mr. Christian, when he lit my kiln overnight and burnt my oats before morning.”.

”'But consider the lilies'----”

”I have considered them, sir; but I'm foiling still and mother has to spin.”

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