65 Short Stories Read Free Page A

pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots in glace kid. She gave Macphail an ingratiating smile.
‘The feller’s tryin’ to soak me a dollar and a half a day for the meanest-sized room,’ she said in a hoarse voice.
‘I tell you she’s a friend of mine, Jo,’ said the quartermaster. ‘She can’t pay more than a dollar, and you’ve sure got to take her for that.’
The trader was fat and smooth and quietly smiling.
‘Well, if you put it like that, Mr Swan, I’ll see what I can do about it. I’ll talk to Mrs Horn and if we think we can make a reduction we will.’
‘Don’t try to pull that stuff with me,’ said Miss Thompson. We’ll settle this right now You get a dollar a day for the room and not one bean more.’
Dr Macphail smiled. He admired the effrontery with which she bargained. He was the sort of man who always paid what he was asked. He preferred to be over-charged than to haggle. The trader sighed.
‘Well, to oblige Mr Swan I’ll take it.’
‘That’s the goods,’ said Miss Thompson. ‘Come right in and have a shot of hooch. I’ve got some real good rye in that grip if you’ll bring it along, Mr Swan. You come along too, doctor.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I will, thank you,’ he answered.’ I’m just going down to see that our luggage is all right.’
He stepped out into the rain. It swept in from the opening of the harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred. He passed two or three natives clad in nothing but the lava-lava, with huge umbrellas over them. They walked finely, with leisurely movements, very upright; and they smiled and greeted him in a strange tongue as they went by.
It was nearly dinner-time when he got back, and their meal was laid in the trader’s parlour. It was a room designed not to live in but for purposes of prestige, and it had a musty, melancholy air. A suite of stamped plush was arranged neatly round the walls, and from the middle of the ceiling, protected from the flies by yellow tissue-paper, hung a gilt chandelier. Davidson did not come.
‘I know he went to call on the governor,’ said Mrs Davidson, ‘and I guess he’s kept him to dinner.’
A little native girl brought them a dish of Hamburger steak, and after a while the trader came up to see that they had everything they wanted.
‘I see we have a fellow lodger, Mr Horn,’ said Dr Macphail.
‘She’s taken a room, that’s all,’ answered the trader. ‘She’s getting her own board.’
He looked at the two ladies with an obsequious air.
‘I put her downstairs so she shouldn’t be in the way. She won’t be any trouble to you.’
‘Is it someone who was on the boat?’ asked Mrs Macphail.
‘Yes, ma’am, she was in the second cabin. She was going to Apia. She has a position as cashier waiting for her.’
‘Oh!’
When the trader was gone Macphail said:
‘I shouldn’t think she’d find it exactly cheerful having her meals in her room.’
‘If she was in the second cabin I guess she’d rather,’ answered Mrs Davidson. ‘I don’t exactly know who it can be.’
‘I happened to be there when the quartermaster brought her along. Her name’s Thompson.’
‘It’s not the woman who was dancing with the quartermaster last night?’ asked Mrs Davidson.
‘That’s who it must be,’ said Mrs Macphail. ‘I wondered at the time what she was. She looked rather fast to me.’
Not good style at all,’ said Mrs Davidson.
They began to talk of other things, and after dinner, tired with their early rise, they separated and slept. When they awoke, though the sky was still grey and the clouds hung low, it was not raining and they went for a walk on the high road which the Americans had built along the bay.
On their return they found that Davidson had just come in.
‘We may be here