Clever Betsy. Clara Louise Burnham
seems good to be back in Fairport,” she went on. “One summer’s absence is quite enough, though I plan to slip away just for a little while to take a look at the Yellowstone this year.”
“That so? Should think you’d had travelin’ enough for one spell,” rejoined Hiram.
“Oh, it’s an appetite that grows with what it feeds on, Captain Salter. I dare say you have been a rover, too. I know how all you sea-captains are.”
“No’m. My line’s ben fish, mostly.”
“And,” added Mrs. Bruce, “taking care of us poor land-lubbers in summer. My son was well satisfied with your sale of his boat. I don’t know whether he will get another this summer or not. You’ll be here as usual, I hope?”
“Looks that way.”
“I’m glad. I’m positively attached to the Gentle Annie.”
“Haven’t got her no more,” returned Hiram quietly. “I’ve parted with her.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose the new one’s better.”
“Well, she’s just as good, anyway.”
“But if she’s not better, I don’t see why you let the Annie go.”
“’Taint always in our power to hold on to things when we’d like to,” responded Hiram equably.
Mrs. Bruce’s eyes shone with interest behind her bi-focals. “Poor man!” she thought. “How improvident these ignorant people are! Probably went into debt, and had to lose his boat, and calculated on doing enough business this summer to pay for the new one.”
“And what,” she asked, with an air of gracious patronage, “will you call this one? Gentle Annie second, of course.”
He shook his head, his sea-blue eyes fixed intrepidly on the object of his affections, who regarded him threateningly.
“Can’t be any Annie second,” he returned quietly.
“Now I think you make a great mistake, Captain Salter,” said Mrs. Bruce, with vigor. “For your own welfare I feel you ought to keep that name. The summer people have been attached to the Gentle Annie so long, and had such confidence in her.”
Hiram nodded; but Mrs. Bruce could not catch his fixed eye as she wished, to emphasize her point.
“They were right,” he answered. “She was a good craft.”
“Confidence in her and you too, I should have said, of course,” went on the lady.
“Yes, we sort o’ went together, pretty comfortable; but – well, I’ve lost her.”
“Yes, but there’s a good-will goes with the name. You make a great mistake not to keep it. Captain Salter and the Gentle Annie; people have said it so many years and had all their sails and their picnics and clambakes with you, it’s like throwing away capital for you to take a new name for your boat. Now if you haven’t already had it put on – ”
“I have.”
Hiram’s eyes were steady, and his lady-love was nervously fighting with the jealous wind for her cheese-cloth headdress, her face apparently flushed by the effort, and her eyes defiant.
“What have you named her?” asked Mrs. Bruce, in disapproval.
“The Clever Betsy.”
“I don’t like it, emphatically. It seems very strange, and it will to everybody.”
“Yes, at first,” rejoined Hiram imperturbably, “but you can get used to anything. It used to be Captain Salter and the Gentle Annie; but in future it’s goin’ to be Captain Salter and the Clever Betsy; and after a while that’s goin’ to seem just as natural as the other.”
The speaker continued to rest his gaze on the narrow reddened countenance, which looked back furiously.
Mrs. Bruce attributed his averted face to shyness, but the direction of his glance gave her an idea.
“Well, I’m sure, Betsy, you should be pleased,” she remarked. “One might think the boat was named for you.”
“Betsy wasn’t ever clever to me,” said Hiram calmly. “She began spellin’ me down at school here when we were children, and she’s ben spellin’ me down ever since.”
Mrs. Bruce looked curiously at the frowning countenance of the capable woman who had meant so much in her husband’s household.
“Just like a snapdragon always,” went on Hiram slowly; “touch her and she’d fly all to pieces; and I guess you put on the finishin’ touch, takin’ her to Europe, Mrs. Bruce. She’s so toploftical to-day that she won’t scarcely speak to me.”
“Betsy was a good traveler; I wouldn’t ask a better,” said Mrs. Bruce absently. The subject of the boat’s name rankled. Her desire to coerce humanity for its own good was like a fire always laid and ready to be kindled, and Hiram had applied the match.
“What do you think of the new name, Betsy? Don’t you think your old friend would have done better to stick to the Gentle Annie?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” was the explosive response. “That’s the only name that’ll ever be connected with Cap’n Salter in this world, and he’d better make the most of it. Hiram, if you’re perishin’ to wear a trail I’ll make you one out o’ paper-cambric. Give me my rug. I want to go in the house.”
Salter motioned toward the speaker with his head, then met Mrs. Bruce’s eyes.
“You heard?” he said. “That’s what I say. Snappy, snappy.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Bruce impressively, “that it’s painted on. It’s a bad idea and won’t bring you luck.”
“Well now, we’ll see,” rejoined Hiram. “I feel just the other way round. I think it’s a good idea and will bring me luck. Folks’ll begin to say Cap’n Salter and the Clever Betsy, Cap’n Salter and the Clever Betsy, and first news you know there’ll be – ”
He paused. Lightnings would have shot from Betsy Foster’s eyes had they been able to express all she felt; but the audacity of his look and manner conveyed a totally new idea to Mrs. Bruce.
“I wish you’d both come out with me this afternoon,” he went on. “I’ll show you just what a good, reliable, faithful craft I’ve got. A bit unsteady sometimes, mebbe, but that’s only because she’s smart and sassy; she always comes up to the mark in an emergency, and never goes back on her skipper. She’s fast, too, and – ”
“Sailin’!” interrupted Betsy, unable to endure another moment. “I guess if you saw the inside o’ that cottage you wouldn’t talk to me about sailin’. If you’re so fond of peacockin’ with that rug, I won’t deprive you of it. You can leave it on the step when you get through.”
Mrs. Bruce’s idea received confirmation by Betsy’s manner and her precipitate departure up the garden-path, and she looked at Hiram Salter blankly. Betsy Foster was the prop of her household. She was the property of the Bruce family. Did this man suppose for one moment that just because they had gone to school together, he could remove her from her useful position? What a selfish, impossible thought! Of course the man wasn’t in love with Betsy. Nobody could be in love with such a severely plain creature; and yet that fancy of the new boat and the new name! It argued a plan of wooing which had some poetry in it.
Here was an affair which Mrs. Bruce would certainly stop with a high hand if there were any real threat in it; but fortunately Betsy would consider it as unthinkable as she herself. If ever displeasure was writ large all over a woman it had been evident in Betsy Foster throughout the interview.
After a short reflective silence during which, both hands behind him, her companion waved the rug in gentle ripples, and met her gaze with an undisturbed smile, she spoke.
“Do take my advice still, Captain Salter,” she said. “Wipe out the Clever Betsy and go back to the Gentle