"Ha!" thought Duff Salter grimly, "there will be no confession there. Then, little Miss Byerly, I will try to throw off its guard thy saucy perversity; for surely these two women understand each other."
After breakfast he followed Podge Byerly down Queen Street and through Beach, and came up with her as she went out of Kensington to the Delaware water-front about the old Northern Liberties district.
Duff bowed with a little of diffidence amid all his gravity, and sneezed as if to hide it:
"Jericho!--Miss Podge, see the time--eight o'clock, and an hour before school. Let us go look at the river."
They walked out on the wharf, and were wholly concealed from shore by piles of cord-wood and staves.
"I like to get off here, away from listeners, where I need not be bellowed at and tire out well-meaning lungs. Now--Jericho! Jericho!" he sneezed, without any sort of meaning. "Miss Podge," said Duff Salter, "if you look directly into my eyes and articulate distinctly, I can hear all you say without raising your voice higher than usual. How much money do you get for school teaching?"
"She can't do it!" exclaimed Duff Salter inwardly; "that director comes in the case. Miss Podge, how old is your brother?"
"Twenty-four. He's my junior," she said archly. "I'm old."
"Why do you support a man twenty-four years old? Did he meet with an accident?"
"He was taken sick, and will never be well," answered Podge warily.
"Excuse me!" exclaimed Duff Salter, "was it constitutional disease? You know I am interested."
"No, sir. He was misled. A woman, much older than himself, infatuated him while a boy, and he married her, and she broke his health and ruined him."
"And you tell me!" he exclaimed, "that you keep three grown people on five hundred dollars a year? Don't you get help from any other quarter?"
"Agnes has given me board for a hundred dollars a year," said Podge, "but times have changed with her now, and money is scarce. She would take other boarders, but public opinion is against her on all sides. It's against me too. But for love we would have separated long ago."
"What right had you," exclaimed Duff Salter, rather angrily, "to maintain a whole family on the servitude of your young body, wearing its roundness down to bone, exciting your nervous system, and inviting premature age upon a nature created for a longer girlhood, and for the solace of love?"