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Updated: June 16, 2025
In justifying his sudden decision to Janoah Eldridge, Willie had merely explained that he had hired Celestina because she was so comfortable to have around, a recommendation at which Wilton would have jeered but which, perhaps, in the eyes of the Lord was quite as praiseworthy as that which her more hidebound but less accommodating sisters could have boasted.
Willie reiterated. Mr. Eldridge shrugged his shoulders. "Take it or leave it," he said. "You're welcome to your own way. Only don't say I didn't warn yer." Flinging this parting shot backward into the room, Janoah Eldridge passed out into the rose-scented sunshine.
"Ain't I just said I was sorry?" hedged the sheepish Janoah. "Indeed, there is no need for anything further," Robert Morton protested. "Perhaps, knowing me so little, it was only natural that he should distrust me." "It was neither natural nor courteous," came hotly from Delight, "and I for one am mortified that any visitor to the village should receive such treatment."
How was the lad to know he was being so artfully made use of? And anyway, perhaps there may have been no conspiracy at all. Might not Janoah have been mistaken about Snelling raiding the workshop? Why, a score of reasons might have brought him there! He might have left behind him something he needed; or there might have been something he wanted to do.
"I I don't believe it," burst out the little inventor, his benumbed faculties beginning slowly to assemble themselves. "Why, there ain't a finer, better-spoken young man to be found than Bob Morton." Janoah caught up the final phrase with derision. "The better spoken he is the more watchin' he'll bear," remarked he. "There's many a villain with an oily gift of gab." "I'll not believe it!"
"In fact, Abbie's of the mind that we get things out of order faster'n we put 'em in." Janoah Eldridge rubbed his grimy hands and chuckled, but Willie deigned no reply. "This propeller now," he presently began as if there had been no digression from the topic, "I s'pose the kelp gets tangled around the blades." "That's it," assented Zenas Henry. "An' that holds up your engine."
The next morning, after loitering uneasily about the workshop a sufficiently long time for Janoah Eldridge to make his appearance and finding that his crony did not make his appearance, Willie reluctantly took his worn visor cap down from the peg and drew it over his brows, with the remark: "Looks like Jan ain't headed this way to-day, either."
Then as if clearing her skirts of the offending Mr. Eldridge, she drew herself to her full height and swept magnificently out the door. An awkward silence followed her departure. Robert Morton hesitated, glancing uneasily from Willie to Janoah, scented a storm and, slipping softly from the shop, went in pursuit of the retreating figure.
"Would you be puttin' in your vacation a-workin' all summer, Willie, if you was the age of that young man?" repeated Janoah. "He ain't here for all summer," protested the unhappy inventor, catching at a straw. "He's only goin' to stay a little while." "He was here fur over night at first, warn't he?" inquired the tormentor.
I know Janoah Eldridge from crown to heel, an' it ain't like him to go off fishin' by himself." "I shouldn't fret about it if I were you," Bob said in an attempt to comfort the disquieted inventor. "I'm sure he'll turn up all right."
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