“We-ll, as I say, I'm sorry it happened. But, honest, Mr. Calvin, I don't know's the boy's to blame so very much, after all. He delivered your lumber, and that's somethin'.”
“Is that all you have to say, Captain Snow? Is that--that impudent young clerk of yours to go unpunished?”
“Then I shall NEVER buy another dollar's worth of your house again, sir.”
Captain Zelotes bowed. “I'm sorry to lose your trade, Mr. Calvin,” he said. “Good mornin'.”
Albert, at his desk in the outer office, was waiting rebelliously to be called before his grandfather and upbraided. And when so called he was in a mood to speak his mind. He would say a few things, no matter what happened in consequence. But he had no chance to say them. Captain Zelotes did not mention the Calvin affair to him, either that day or afterward. Albert waited and waited, expecting trouble, but the trouble, so far as his grandfather was concerned, did not materialize. He could not understand it.
But if in that office there was silence concerning the unusual delivery of the lumber for the Calvin porch, outside there was talk enough and to spare. Each Welfare Worker talked when she reached home and the story spread. Small boys shouted after Albert when he walked down the main street, demanding to know how Ves Young's cart was smellin' these days. When he entered the post office some one in the crowd was almost sure to hum, “Here's to the good old whiskey, drink her down.” On the train on the way to the picnic, girls and young fellows had slyly nagged him about it. The affair and its consequence were the principal causes of his mood that day; this particular “Portygee streak” was due to it.
The path along the edge of the high bluff entered a grove of scraggy pitch pines about a mile from the lighthouse and the picnic ground. Albert stalked gloomily through the shadows of the little grove and emerged on the other side. There he saw another person ahead of him on the path. This other person was a girl. He recognized her even at this distance. She was Helen Kendall.
She and he had not been quite as friendly of late. Not that there was any unfriendliness between them, but she was teaching in the primary school and, as her father had not been well, spent most of her evenings at home. During the early part of the winter he had called occasionally but, somehow, it had seemed to him that she was not quite as cordial, or as interested in his society and conversation as she used to be. It was but a slight indifference on her part, perhaps, but Albert Speranza was not accustomed to indifference on the part of his feminine acquaintances. So he did not call again. He had seen her at the picnic ground and they had spoken, but not at any length.