jolly well awfully love the fair captive, yon
heartless jade--my Auntie Helen? Don't you, Black Bart?"

I made no answer, but frowned very much at his presumption.

"--Because, everybody else does. She's nice. I should think you would.
_I_ do, I know mighty well."

"She is--she is--she's a very estimable young woman, Jimmy," said I,
coloring. "I think I may say that without compromising myself."

"Then why do you hurt her feelings the way you do--when she's plumb
gone on you, the way she is?"

I sprang toward him to clap a hand over his garrulous mouth, but he
evaded me, and spoke from behind the bathroom door. "Well, she is!
Don't I hear her sticking up for you all the time--didn't I hear her
an' Auntie Lucinda havin' a reg'lar row over it again, 'I don't care
if he _hasn't_ got a cent!' says she."

"But yon varlet is rich," said I.

"She didn't mean yon varlet--she meant you, I'm pretty sure, Black
Bart. An' she's been feedin' Partial all the afternoon--say, he's the
shape of a sausage."

"She is heartless, Jimmy! Little do you know the ways of a heartless
jade--she wants to win away from me the last thing on earth I
have--even my dog. That's all. Now, Jimmy, you must go."

But he emerged only in part from his shelter. "So Jean Lafitte an' me,
we looked it up in the book; an' it says where the heartless jade is
brought before the pirut chief, 'How now, fair one!' says he, an' he
bends on her the piercin' gaze o' his iggle eye: 'how now, wouldst
spurn me suit?' The fair captive she bends her head an' stands before
him unable to encounter his piercin' gaze, an' for some moments a deep
silence prevails----"

"Jimmy!" I heard a clear voice calling along the deck. No answer, and
Jimmy raised a hand to command silence of me also.

"Jimme-e-e-e!" It was Helena's voice, and nearer along the rail.
"Here's the fudges--now where can the little nuisance have gone! Jim!"

"Here I am, Auntie," replied the little nuisance, as she now
approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started
not aft but toward the bows. "An' there _you_ are!" he shouted over
his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I
could not say.

She stood now in such position near my door that neither of us could
avoid the other without open rudeness. I looked at her gravely and she
at me, her eyes wide, her lips silent for a time. Silently also, I
swung the cabin door wide and stood back for her to pass.