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The sweater, wrapped about the post where, in summer, a wooden sailor brandished his paddles, flapped soggily in the wind. Hardy gazed after him. "What in time ?" he exclaimed. Then, raising his voice, he called: "Hi, Jed! Jed! You crazy critter! What Jed, hold on a minute, didn't you know she was goin'? Didn't she tell you? Jed!" But Jed had entered the shop and closed the door.

And BANG! would a door fly open, and ROAR! a well-dressed animal about five feet six inches in height, with prominent cuffs and a sportive tie, the altogether decently and neatly clothed thick-built figure squirming from top to toe with anger, the large head trembling and white-faced beneath a flourishing mane of coarse blackish bristly perhaps hair, the arm crooked at the elbow and shaking a huge fist of pinkish well-manicured flesh, the distinct, cruel, brightish eyes sprouting from their sockets under bushily enormous black eyebrows, the big, weak, coarse mouth extended almost from ear to ear, and spouting invective, the soggily brutal lips clinched upward and backward, showing the huge horse-like teeth to the froth-shot gums

But he didn't try; he just set there soggily drinking champagne to drown the memory of his lost watch. And pretty soon Ben has to order another quart of this twelve-dollar beverage. The New Yorker keeps right on with the new bottle, daring it to do its worst and it does; he was soon speaking out of a dense fog when he spoke at all.

Outside, the palm leaves were dripping in the night fog that had swept soggily in from the ocean. Her mother was trying to collect a gas bill from the dressmaker down the hall, who protested shrilly that she distinctly remembered having paid that gas bill once and had no intention of paying it twice.

At any rate, curving back her trunk and "roomping" out the perturbation of her spirit, she reared on her hind-legs, boosted herself upon the roof of the house, and clawed aft. This auto-shifting of cargo lifted the bow of the little schooner. Her jibs, swashing soggily about her bow, were hoisted out of the water, and a gust bellied them.

The Elsinore, naked-sparred, under only lower-topsails, with spanker and crojack furled, was prepared for anything. Her lower-topsails hung in limp emptiness from the yards, heavy with rain and flapping soggily when she rolled. The cloud mass thinned, the day brightened, the green blackness passed into gray twilight, the lightning eased, the thunder moved along away from us, and there was no wind.

One of these, whose walk extended from corner to corner, heard something, and paused often to listen intently, his eyes peering around into the fog. But the sound was not repeated while he listened only as his footfalls sounded soggily on the damp path were they punctuated by this still, small sound, that he could not localize or remember.

He said it probably would not sink at all. He seemed to have learned at first glance a lot about that schooner. "It's lumber laden, from some Maine port. Probably going to Baltimore, or some port down that way. They have jettisoned her deck load, and now she'll just float soggily. But her sails will never carry her to port."

In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger, the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal Tiger's ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic cat of her acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate.

"The hero!" he cried. "Forget him not. Crown him with flowers." And Bert was crowned with flowers from the vases, unchanged from the day before. When a bunch of water-logged stems of early tulips, propelled by Lute's vigorous arm, impacted soggily on his neck under the ear, he fled. The riot of pursuit echoed along the hall and died out down the stairway toward the stag room.