The woman looked at me steadfastly for a minute, and then she rose to her feet. Then she called out, as if she were crying fish or strawberries:
"Mrs. Blaine!"
The female keeper of the intelligence office, and the male keeper, and a thin clerk, and all the women in the back room, and all the patrons in the front room, jumped up and gathered around us.
Astonished and somewhat disconcerted, I rose to my feet and confronted the tall Irishwoman, and stood smiling in an uncertain sort of way, as if it were all very funny; but I couldn't see the point. I think I must have impressed the people with the idea that I wished I hadn't come.
"He says," exclaimed the woman, as if some other huckster were crying fish on the other side of the street—"he say he lives in a washtoob."
"He's crazy!" ejaculated Mrs. Blaine, with an air that indicated "policeman" as plainly as if she had put her thought into words.
A low murmur ran through the crowd of women, while the thin clerk edged toward the door.
I saw there was no time to lose. I stepped back a little from the tall savage, who was breathing like a hot-air engine in front of me, and made my explanations to the company. I told the tale of Rudder Grange, and showed them how it was like a stationary washtub—at certain stages of the tide.
I was listened to with great attention. When I had finished, the tall woman turned around and faced the assemblage.
"An' he wants a cook to make soup! In a canal-boat!" said she; and off she marched into the back room, followed closely by all the other women.
32
