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Knowing that he particularly objected to having any of his possessions disturbed, and fearing that Diddimus might do some mischief there, Louise followed the tortoise-shell, calling to him: "Come out of there! Come out instantly, Diddimus! What do you mean by venturing in where we are all forbidden to enter? Don't you know, Diddimus, that only fools dare venture where angels fear to tread? Scat!"
Stretched upon the couch in the living-room behind the store, with Diddimus purring beside him, Professor Grayling heard that evening the story of Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Betty Gallup had gone back to the beach and Louise could talk freely to her father. "And he saved me, for your sake!" murmured the professor. "He gave me his place in the lifeboat!
Casually he thought of his cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all. "Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't at sea in a blow like this." It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing.
"Drop your dunnage right down there," as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder. "Take that big rocker. Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your place." "Oh, don't bother him, Uncle Abram. What a beauty he is," Louise said, as the tortoise-shell without otherwise moving opened one great, yellow eye. "He's a lazy good-for-nothing," Cap'n Abe said mildly.
Out-o'-doors ain't nothin' to him now." Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor little Jerry. He had promised Abe, he said. He kept that promise faithfully. Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem. At first, whenever he saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled. Then, gradually, an unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell.
He has just pointed out to me the spot on the bluff where he intends to build a cottage for Lawford and Louise." "What's this?" demanded Professor Grayling, sitting up so suddenly on the couch that Diddimus spat and jumped off in haste and anger. "I I was just going to tell you about Lawford," Louise said in a small voice. "Oh, yes!
They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe the evening before. She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had. But no, he began spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth. Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat.
Diddimus, who still had his doubts of the piratical looking captain, lay in Louise's lap and purred loudly under the ministration of her gentle hand, while Cap'n Abe talked. It was a story that brought to the eyes of the sympathetic girl the sting of tears as well as bubbling laughter to her lips. And in it all she found something almost heroic as well as ridiculous.
Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a stranger to turn. The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe always sat. He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap. "Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon. "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?" Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into the face of the captain.
Several of his rather tart rejoinders reached her ears as she went from kitchen to livingroom and back again. Finally removing the apron, her task done, she seated herself with Diddimus in her lap within the radiance of the lamp and within hearing of all that was said in the store. "No. I dunno's I ever did tell ye quite all my business, Joab.
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