“Damn!” muttered David, pushing back his chair and yawning. There were shrill voices in loud altercation in the not distant kitchen, the sound of a hard-shut door, and the waitress reappeared, red-cheeked and breathless, bearing a large black coffee-pot in her two hands held far in front of her.
“Here it is, Mr. Whitcomb,” she said. “That nasty ol’ cook was bound I shouldn’t bring it in ’ere. She threw dish-water on my clean apron. I could ’a’ killed her!”
She held the coffee-pot for his inspection and David lifted the lid, peered in, and sniffed disgustedly.
“Ugh!” he said. “I thought so. Now I like decent coffee, and I’ll buy a coffee-pot just to make my coffee in. Do you suppose you could keep it, so that termagant in the kitchen wouldn’t annex it?”
“You bet I can,” giggled the girl delightedly, “an’ I’ll do it, too, jus’ to spite Sarah. An’ I’ll make your coffee every morning. I’d love to, Mr. Whitcomb.”
“Good girl,” drawled David. He waved his hand toward the table. “You may as well take these things away,” he said. “I’m—er—not hungry this morning.”
The girl’s face fell; her full lips quivered and pouted like a child’s on the verge of sobbing.
“I made the toast,” she said. “I made it jus’ like you said. It—it’s good.”
“It looks fine, Jennie; but you see it’s so near dinner-time—see here, my girl, you buy the coffee-pot for me; will you?—just a plain tin one, mind. And—er—keep the change.”
The girl took up the money and folded it together carefully. When she raised her blue eyes they were swimming in tears.
“I—I’ll do anythin’ you say,” she whimpered, “anythin’ you want me to.”
By way of answer, perhaps, David pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping sound that echoed dismally through the empty room. Then he rose, clapped his straw hat on the back of his curly head, searched for his cigarette case and matches and stalked out to the piazza by way of the passage which, in country fashion, afforded an easy mode of transit between the bar and the dining-room. At one side of the passage was set a high, ink-spattered desk, and behind it a long-legged stool, upon which perched a fattish, elderly man intent upon a ledger. This individual appeared to feel the heat of the June morning exceedingly, for he mopped his face from time to time with a large handkerchief, in the intervals of setting down laborious lines of figures. He looked up as David Whitcomb approached, and his large face creased itself into a dubious smile.