“Trying to frighten me?” suggested the smiling captain. “Why, you admitted to me yourself that it was ’er that ’ad all the money!”

“So she ’ad,” returned Mrs. Gooster’s mother—“then!”

“What do you mean—then?” asked the captain, thickly.

“Why, it was all to be ’ers,” explained the new Mrs. p. 24Dobb, “unless she married without my consent. My ’usband arranged it like that to protect ’er from fortune ’unters, and very lucky ’e did, too! You needn’t shake your ’ead! It’s all quite true. ’Ere’s a copy of my ’usband’s will. I showed it to Dobb ’ere when ’e was trying to console me that evening after you’d left—you know, when you threw me over!”

p. 24

“You—you knew when you advised me to—” roared the skipper, wheeling on Mr. Dobb.

“I did,” shamelessly admitted Mr. Dobb. “Part of it I worked out, and part of it worked itself out for me! You see, I—I ’appened to fall genuine in love with my new wife ’ere and—”

“You needn’t trouble to tell lies about it!” shouted the skipper.

“And don’t you roar at my ’usband like that, neither!” ordered the elder lady. “And I may as well tell you that I’d ’ave taken ’im if I ’ated ’im—I’d ’ave taken the first man what come along! Anything to let you see you wasn’t the only chance I’d got! And—”

“Well, but what becomes of the money that should ’ave been ’ers—the money you’ve diddled me out of?” cried the captain.

“Why,” said Horace, softly, “it just stays with us!”

“And you knew this when you advised me to get married on the quiet to Ann, yonder?”

“Certingly,” said the unabashed Horace. “Didn’t we both agree that ‘Strictly Business!’ was a jolly good motter?”

“And you,” went on the skipper, wheeling on his bride—“you didn’t tell me nothing, for fear of losing me?”

p. 25“And so I should have,” she said. “And don’t you stare at me like that, neither! If you think that I’m the kind of wife that can be bullied, you’re making a big mistake! And now I’ll get my portmanteau, and you can take me down to your cabin on the ‘Alert.’ You don’t think I’m going to stay on in the house with these people, do you?”

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