“Oh, well, you mustn’t cry around here,” said Lapham soothingly.
“I know it,” said Miss Dewey. “If I could get rid of Hen, I could manage well enough with mother. Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could get the divorce. He’s said so over and over again.”
“I don’t know as I like that very well,” said Lapham, frowning. “I don’t know as I want you should get married in any hurry again. I don’t know as I like your going with anybody else just yet.”
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid but what it’ll be all right. It’ll be the best thing all round, if I can marry him.”
“Well!” said Lapham impatiently; “I can’t think about it now. I suppose they’ve cleaned everything out again?”
“Yes, they have,” said Zerrilla; “there isn’t a cent left.”
“You’re a pretty expensive lot,” said Lapham. “Well, here!” He took out his pocketbook and gave her a note. “I’ll be round tonight and see what can be done.”
He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried her tears, put the note into her bosom, and went her way.
Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It was then six o’clock, the hour at which the Laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now. He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in combating one care with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey, and at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. It was in a region of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and “ladies’ and gents’ ” dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and Lapham followed to Miss Dewey’s door a waiter from one of these, who bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. Zerrilla had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of receiving the visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did not rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology.
“Well, I don’t suppose but what you’ll think we’re livin’ on the fat o’ the land, right straight along, all the while. But it’s just like this. When that child came in from her work, she didn’t seem to have the spirit to go to cookin’ anything, and I had such a bad night last night I was feelin’ all broke up, and s’d I, what’s the use, anyway? By the time the butcher’s heaved in a lot o’ bone, and made you pay for the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not git it from the rest’rant first off, and save the cost o’ your fire? s’d I.”
“What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?” demanded Lapham, who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla had set him.
“Well, yes, it’s a bottle,” said the woman, with an assumption of virtuous frankness. “It’s whisky; I got to have something to rub my rheumatism with.”
“Humph!” grumbled Lapham. “You’ve been rubbing his rheumatism too, I see.”
He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, now softly and rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet.
“He hain’t had a drop today in this house!” cried the woman.
“What are you doing around here?” said Lapham, turning fiercely upon him. “You’ve got no business ashore. Where’s your ship? Do you think I’m going to let you come here and eat your wife out of house and home, and then give money to keep the concern going?”
“Just the very words I said when he first showed his face here, yist’day. Didn’t I, Z’rilla?” said the woman, eagerly joining in the rebuke of her late boon companion. “You got no business here, Hen, s’d I. You can’t come here to live on me and Z’rilla, s’d I. You want to go back to your ship, s’d I. That’s what I said.”
The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability for Lapham, something about the crew being discharged.
“Yes,” the woman broke in, “that’s always the way with these coasters. Why don’t you go off on some them long v’y’ges? s’d I. It’s pretty hard when Mr. Wemmel stands ready to marry Z’rilla and provide a comfortable home for us both—I hain’t got a great many years more to live, and I should like to get some satisfaction out of ’em, and not be beholden and dependent all my days—to have Hen, here, blockin’ the way. I tell him there’d be more money for him in the end; but he can’t seem to make up his mind to it.”
“Well, now, look here,” said Lapham. “I don’t care anything about all that. It’s your own business, and I’m not going to meddle with it. But it’s my business who lives off me; and so I tell you all three, I’m willing to take care of Zerrilla, and I’m willing to take care of her mother—”
“I guess if it hadn’t been for that child’s father,” the mother interpolated, “you wouldn’t been here to tell the tale, Colonel Lapham.”
“I know all about that,” said Lapham. “But I’ll tell you what, Mr. Dewey, I’m not going to support you.”
“I don’t see what Hen’s done,” said the old woman impartially.
“He hasn’t done anything, and I’m going to stop it. He’s got to get a ship, and he’s got to
