"Well, I hope she's satisfied, what she's done for Joshua. I saw him to the post-office last evening, and the hang-dog look of him----"
"Yes, I saw him, too. A man can't stand being made a fool of...."
So, in the blue of a wash-day morning the words went winging back and forth between the blossoming lines. Or, in a Winter dusk up to the westward, where old Mrs. Paine scuttled about under the mackerel-twine of her chicken-pen:
"Land alive, it's all very well to talk Temp'rance, and I'm not denying it'd be a mercy for some folks--I ain't mentioning no names--not even Miah White's. But, land sakes how you going to talk Temp'rance to a man bereft and be-fooled like Joshua Blake? Where's your rime-nor-reason? Where's your argument?"
Or there came Miah White himself up our outside stair on the darkest evening of our Spring weather, and one glance at his crimson face was enough to tell what all the Temperance they had preached to _him_ had come to. Miah turned to the bottle as another man might to prayer.
"By the Lord!" he protested thickly. "Something's got to be done!"
"Done? About what?" I remember my cousin peering curiously at him through the smoke and spatter of the sausage he was frying.
"About Josh, of course, and _her_. I tell you, Dunc, 'tain't right, and I'll not bear it. I'll not see Josh, same as I seen him this night, standing there in the dark of the outside beach and staring at the water like a sleep-walker, staring and staring as if he'd stare right through it and down to the bottom of the sea where his brother lay, and saying to himself, _Who's to pay the bill? Who's to pay the bill?_ No, siree! You and I are young fellows, Dunc, but we ain't so young we can't remember them boys' father, and I guess he done a thing or two for us, eh?"
"Yes," Duncan agreed calmly. "But what's to be done?"
"God knows! But look here, Dunc, you're constable, ain't you?"
Duncan smiled pityingly, as if to say, "Don't be an idiot, Miah."
"And if you're constable, and a man owns a bill he won't pay, why then you've something to say in it, ain't I right? Well, here's a bill to pay, fair and square. All this wool she'd pull over our eyes about Andrew and the India ship--as if _that_ made a mite of difference one way or the other! No, siree, Dunc, she give her word to take the man that fetched the ring--that man's Joshua--the bargain's filled on his side--and there you are. Now, you're constable. I take it right, Duncan, you should give that girl a piece of your mind; give her to understand that, India ship yes, India ship no, she's got a bill to pay and a man's soul to save from damnation everlasting."