Part 49 (1/2)
”No, no! Oh, Tunis! It can't--”
”No 'can't' in the dictionary,” interrupted the captain of the _Seamew_. ”You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home.”
”Up home?” she repeated.
”You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living reason why you shouldn't return to the b.a.l.l.s. Besides, they need you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning. The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old hen was a sight to make the angels weep.”
”Poor, poor Cap'n Ira!” she murmured.
”And poor Aunt Prudence--and poor _me_!” exclaimed Tunis. ”What do you think is going to happen to me? If you go away, I shall have to sell all I own in the world and follow you.”
”Tunis!” she cried, almost in fear. ”You wouldn't.”
”I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another.
n.o.body else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or fast enough to lose me.”
”Don't!” she said faintly. ”You cannot be in earnest. Do you know what it means if you and I have any a.s.sociation whatsoever? Oh! I thought this was all over--that you would not tear open the wound--”
”I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila,” he said softly. But he was smiling. ”I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put an entirely different complexion on your affairs.”
”What--what can you mean?” she burst out. ”Oh, tell me!”
”I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the b.a.l.l.s'
sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue.”
”Tunis!” she murmured with clasped hands.
”Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin & Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months.
Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that--that school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have got work in that Seller's place.”
”What do you mean? What did they want me for?” gasped the girl.
”Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was all broke up.”
The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks. She could not have fallen!
”They--they know--”
”They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the p.a.w.nbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks.
Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated.”
She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.
”Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done.”
”Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila,” he said. ”But how about me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you?
Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought. There is for me, at any rate.”