Sheila of Big Wreck Cove. James A. Cooper
sir?"
"You've rung me up an extry nickel. What's the idea?"
"Fifteen cents for meringue, sir."
"Huh? Who had meringue? I had apple pie, plain apple pie. It's ten cents. This feller"—indicating Tunis—"ordered apple-meringue; not me."
He held out the check for correction belligerently.
"You ordered apple-meringue, sir, and I brought it. You ate it. The check is correct."
Low and timid as the voice was, gently as the words were spoken, Tunis sensed an undercurrent of firmness and determination in the girl's character that he had not before suspected.
"Say, you don't put nothing like that over on me!" exclaimed the man loudly.
Tunis moved in his chair. He saw the black-haired man at the front of the restaurant swing about to face down the room. He had heard this unseemly disturbance.
"I will call the manager."
"And so will I—I'll call him good!" sneered the patron. "He knows that you crooks in here over-charge. He puts you up to it. That's why he hires jailbirds and—"
Tunis had got up, pushed back his chair with his foot, and as the girl uttered a horrified gasp at the rough speech, he seized the man. His grip on the back of the fellow's coat between his shoulders brought a startled grunt from lips parted to continue his blackguardism.
"Hey! What d'ye mean?" roared the fellow, as Tunis twisted him into the aisle.
"You dog!" said the captain of the Seamew in a low voice. "Down on your knees and ask the lady's pardon for that speech!"
The black-haired man started toward them. His coarse face had a smile on it as vicious as the snarl of a tiger. He put up his hand in a gesture of command.
"Beg her pardon!" repeated Tunis, and by the great weight of his hand crushed the squalling patron of the restaurant to his knees before the terrified girl.
"Stop that! What do you mean?" cried the manager of the restaurant, still several yards away.
The patrons of the place had been thinning out for the last few minutes. Most of those remaining were near the front. Some of the waitresses were already seated at a table next to the kitchen slide, eating their suppers.
"Take him off me!" roared the man squirming on the floor under Tunis Latham's hand. "That thief of a girl set him on me. This is a nice thing, be overcharged and then assaulted!"
He was talking for the benefit of the black-haired man. The latter swooped down upon them. His face was purple with wrath and his fat jowls trembled.
"Let him up! Do you hear me?" he exclaimed.
"He insulted this lady," said Tunis, indicating the waitress. "You just heard him repeat it. He'll beg her pardon or I'll wring his neck."
"What do you mean?" cried the restaurant man. "What's the girl to you? One of her friends, are you? Well, you are doing her no good with me, I assure you."
The captain of the Seamew flung the little man face down upon the floor and held him there with his foot while he reached with both hands for the proprietor. He got him. The latter uttered a squeak like a captured rat.
"You're another of the same breed, are you?" Tunis demanded. "You'll beg her pardon, too, or I'll crack the heads of the two of you together! Come!"
He stood the man on his feet before the waitress with such force that his teeth rattled. He stooped and yanked the other to an upright posture likewise. The shrinking girl, Tunis noticed, was not weeping. She looked at all he did as though she approved. The other girls were shrieking. The cashier had run to the door and cried into the street for the police. But that violet-eyed girl, timid as she naturally was, did not open her lips.
"She's a plucky little lady," thought Tunis Latham. "But somebody's got to stand up for her."
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