Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection)

“It would be a fine start for them,” continued the benevolent Mr. Green.

Mr. Letts, by a strong effort, regained his composure.

“I must have a look at him first,” he said, briskly. “He mightn’t meet with my approval.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Green, starting. “Why, if Betty–”

“I must think it over,” interrupted Mr. Letts, with a wave of his hand. “Betty is only nineteen, and, as head of the family, I don’t think she can marry without my consent. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Anyway, if she does, I won’t have her husband here sitting in my chairs, eating off my tables, sleeping in my beds, wearing out my stair-rods, helping himself–”

“Stow it,” said Miss Foster, calmly.

Mr. Letts started, and lost the thread of his discourse. “I must have a look at him,” he concluded, lamely; “he may be all right, but then, again, he mightn’t.”

He finished his tea almost in silence, and, the meal over, emphasized his position as head of the family by taking the easy-chair, a piece of furniture sacred to Mr. Green, and subjecting that injured man to a catechism which strained his powers of endurance almost to breaking-point.

“Well, I sha’n’t make any change at present,” said Mr. Letts, when the task was finished. “There’s plenty of room here for us all, and, so long as you and me agree, things can go on as they are. To-morrow morning I shall go out and look for a job.”

He found a temporary one almost at once, and, determined to make a favorable impression, worked hard all day. He came home tired and dirty, and was about to go straight to the wash-house to make his toilet when Mr. Green called him in.

“My friend, Mr. Widden,” he said, with a satisfied air, as he pointed to a slight, fair young man with a well-trimmed moustache.

Mr. Letts shook hands.

“Fine day,” said Mr. Widden.

“Beautiful,” said the other. “I’ll come in and have a talk about it when I’ve had a wash.”

“Me and Miss Foster are going out for a bit of a stroll,” said Mr. Widden.

“Quite right,” agreed Mr. Letts. “Much more healthy than staying indoors all the evening. If you just wait while I have a wash and a bit o’ something to eat I’ll come with you.”

“Co-come with us!” said Mr. Widden, after an astonished pause.

Mr. Letts nodded. “You see, I don’t know you yet,” he explained, “and as head of the family I want to see how you behave yourself. Properly speaking, my consent ought to have been asked before you walked out with her; still, as everybody thought I was drowned, I’ll say no more about it.”

“Mr. Green knows all about me,” said Mr. Widden, rebelliously.

“It’s nothing to do with him,” declared Mr. Letts. “And, besides, he’s not what I should call a judge of character. I dare say you are all right, but I’m going to see for myself. You go on in the ordinary way with your love-making, without taking any notice of me. Try and forget I’m watching you. Be as natural as you can be, and if you do anything I don’t like I’ll soon tell you of it.”

The bewildered Mr. Widden turned, but, reading no hope of assistance in the infuriated eyes of Mr. Green, appealed in despair to Betty.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “Why should I?”

Mr. Widden could have supplied her with many reasons, but he refrained, and sat in sulky silence while Mr. Letts got ready. From his point of view the experiment was by no means a success, his efforts to be natural being met with amazed glances from Mr. Letts and disdainful requests from Miss Foster to go home if he couldn’t behave himself. When he relapsed into moody silence Mr. Letts cleared his throat and spoke.

“There’s no need to be like a monkey-on-a-stick, and at the same time there’s no need to be sulky,” he pointed out; “there’s a happy medium.”

“Like you, I s’pose?” said the frantic suitor. “Like me,” said the other, gravely. “Now, you watch; fall in behind and watch.”

He drew Miss Foster’s arm through his and, leaning towards her with tender deference, began a long conversation. At the end of ten minutes Mr. Widden intimated that he thought he had learned enough to go on with.

“Ah! that’s only your conceit,” said Mr. Letts over his shoulder. “I was afraid you was conceited.”

He turned to Miss Foster again, and Mr. Widden, with a despairing gesture, abandoned himself to gloom. He made no further interruptions, but at the conclusion of the walk hesitated so long on the door-step that Mr. Letts had to take the initiative.

“Good-night,” he said, shaking hands. “Come round to-morrow night and I’ll give you another lesson. You’re a slow learner, that’s what you are; a slow learner.”

He gave Mr. Widden a lesson on the following evening, but cautioned him sternly against imitating the display of brotherly fondness of which, in a secluded lane, he had been a wide-eyed observer.

“When you’ve known her as long as I have—nineteen years,” said Mr. Letts, as the other protested, “things’ll be a bit different. I might not be here, for one thing.”

By exercise of great self-control Mr. Widden checked the obvious retort and walked doggedly in the rear of Miss Foster. Then, hardly able to believe his ears, he heard her say something to Mr. Letts.

“Eh?” said that gentleman, in amazed accents.

“You fall behind,” said Miss Foster.

“That—that’s not the way to talk to the head of the family,” said Mr. Letts, feebly.

“It’s the way I talk to him,” rejoined the girl.

It was a position for which Mr. Letts was totally unprepared, and the satisfied smile of Mr. Widden as he took the vacant place by no means improved matters. In a state of considerable dismay Mr. Letts dropped farther and farther behind until, looking up, he saw Miss Foster, attended by her restive escort, quietly waiting for him. An odd look in her eyes as they met his gave him food for thought for the rest of the evening.

At the end of what Mr. Letts was pleased to term a month’s trial, Mr. Widden was still unable to satisfy him as to his fitness for the position of brother-in-law. In a spirit of gloom he made suggestions of a mutinous nature to Mr. Green, but that gentleman, who had returned one day pale and furious, but tamed, from an interview that related to his treatment of his wife, held out no hopes of assistance.

“I wash my hands of him,” he said bitterly. “You stick to it; that’s all you can do.”

“They lost me last night,” said the unfortunate. “I stayed behind just to take a stone out of my shoe, and the earth seemed to swallow them up. He’s so strong. That’s the worst of it.”

“Strong?” said Mr. Green.

Mr. Widden nodded. “Tuesday evening he showed her how he upset a man once and stood him on his head,” he said, irritably. “I was what he showed her with.”

“Stick to it!” counselled Mr. Green again. “A brother and sister are bound to get tired of each other before long; it’s nature.”

Mr. Widden sighed and obeyed. But brother and sister showed no signs of tiring of each other’s company, while they displayed unmistakable signs of weariness with his. And three weeks later Mr. Letts, in a few well-chosen words, kindly but firmly dismissed him.

“I should never give my consent,” he said, gravely, “so it’s only wasting your time. You run off and play.”

Mr. Widden ran off to Mr. Green, but before he could get a word out discovered that something unusual had happened. Mrs. Green, a picture of distress, sat at one end of the room with a handkerchief to her eyes; Mr. Green, in a condition compounded of joy and rage, was striding violently up and down the room.

“He’s a fraud!” he shouted. “A fraud! I’ve had my suspicions for some time, and this evening I got it out of her.”

Mr. Widden stared in amazement.

“I got it out of her,” repeated Mr. Green, pointing at the trembling woman. “He’s no more her son than what you are.”

“What?” said the amazed listener.