"
"Wish he'd hev tried it," said the brother, with a superior smile,
but a quickly rising color. "Where d'ye suppose I'D hev been all
the while?"
Maggie saw her mistake, and for the first time in her life resolved
to keep a secret from her brother--overnight. "Supper's gettin'
cold," she said, rising.
They went into the dining-room--an apartment as plainly furnished
as the one they had quitted, but in its shelves, cupboards, and
closely fitting boarding bearing out the general nautical
suggestion of the house--and seated themselves before a small table
on which their frugal meal was spread. In this tete-a-tete
position Jim suddenly laid down his knife and fork and stared at
his sister.
"Hello!"
"What's the matter?" said Maggie, starting slightly. "How you do
skeer one."
"Who's been prinkin', eh?"
"My ha'r was in kinks all along o' that hat," said Maggie, with a
return of higher color, "and I had to straighten it. It's a boy's
hat, not a girl's."
But that necktie and that gown--and all those frills and tuckers?"
continued Jim generalizing, with a rapid twirling of his fingers
over her. "Are you expectin' Judge Martin, or the Expressman this
evening?"
Judge Martin was the lawyer of Logport, who had proven her father's
will, and had since raved about his single interview with the
Kingfisher's beautiful daughter; the Expressman was a young fellow
who was popularly supposed to have left his heart while delivering
another valuable package on Maggie in person, and had "never been
the same man since.
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