"Beg her pardon!" repeated Tunis, and by the great weight of his hand crushed the squalling patron of the restaurant to his knees before the terrified girl.
"Stop that! What do you mean?" cried the manager of the restaurant, still several yards away.
The patrons of the place had been thinning out for the last few minutes. Most of those remaining were near the front. Some of the waitresses were already seated at a table next to the kitchen slide, eating their suppers.
"Take him off me!" roared the man squirming on the floor under Tunis Latham"s hand. "That thief of a girl set him on me. This is a nice thing, be overcharged and then a.s.saulted!"
He was talking for the benefit of the black-haired man. The latter swooped down upon them. His face was purple with wrath and his fat jowls trembled.
"Let him up! Do you hear me?" he exclaimed.
"He insulted this lady," said Tunis, indicating the waitress. "You just heard him repeat it. He"ll beg her pardon or I"ll wring his neck."
"What do you mean?" cried the restaurant man. "What"s the girl to you? One of her friends, are you? Well, you are doing her no good with me, I a.s.sure you."
The captain of the _Seamew_ flung the little man face down upon the floor and held him there with his foot while he reached with both hands for the proprietor. He got him. The latter uttered a squeak like a captured rat.
"You"re another of the same breed, are you?" Tunis demanded. "You"ll beg her pardon, too, or I"ll crack the heads of the two of you together! Come!"
He stood the man on his feet before the waitress with such force that his teeth rattled. He stooped and yanked the other to an upright posture likewise. The shrinking girl, Tunis noticed, was not weeping. She looked at all he did as though she approved. The other girls were shrieking. The cashier had run to the door and cried into the street for the police. But that violet-eyed girl, timid as she naturally was, did not open her lips.
"She"s a plucky little lady," thought Tunis Latham. "But somebody"s got to stand up for her."
CHAPTER VIII
SHEILA
The captain of the _Seamew_ held the two struggling, cursing men as though they were small boys. His eyes flamed a question at the girl.
She understood and nodded, if ever so faintly.
"I ought to send both of you to the hospital," said Tunis in a grim voice. "But I"m satisfied if you beg her pardon and let her go."
This to the restaurant proprietor.
The man opened his lips to emit something besides an apology, although the smaller man was already quelled. But the look in Tunis Latham"s face made the black-haired man pause.
"Well, she can"t cause a disturbance here. But I meant no offense."
The smaller man hastened to add:
"So help me! I was that mad I didn"t know what I said. I didn"t mean nothing."
Tunis nodded solemnly.
"Get your coat and hat, miss," he said. "I guess it won"t be a pleasant place for you to work in after this."
She slipped away. Tunis let the men go. They both stepped away from him, panting, relaxing their shoulders, eyeing the young captain with as much curiosity as apprehension.
Suddenly there was an added commotion at the front door. Tunis saw a policeman enter. The coa.r.s.e-featured proprietor of the restaurant instantly recovered all his courage.
"This way, officer! This way!" he cried. "Here"s the man."
At that moment Tunis felt a tug at his coat. He flashed a glance over his shoulder. It was the girl. She wore a little hat pulled down over all that black hair, and she was b.u.t.toning a shabby jacket. There was a way out by the alley; he well knew it. Nor was he anxious of appearing before either a police lieutenant or a magistrate for creating a disturbance in the place.
"Run along. I"ll be right behind you," he whispered.
The policeman was some distance, and several tables away. Tunis looked to see if all was clear. The girl was just pa.s.sing through the swinging door into the kitchen. Tunis stepped back, turned suddenly, while the restaurant proprietor was making ready to address the policeman, and leaped for the rear exit.
"There he goes!" squealed the patron who had been the cause of the trouble.
But n.o.body stopped Tunis Latham. At a flash, when he got into the kitchen, he saw the girl opening the outer door. The way was clear.
He crossed the room in several quick strides and caught up with her.
The startled chef and his a.s.sistants merely stared.
The alley was empty, but they walked swiftly away from the square.
The arc lamp on the corner which they approached sputtered continuously, like soda water bubbling out of a bottle. He looked down at her curiously in the flickering illumination from this lamp and found the girl looking up at him just as curiously.
"That was an unwise thing to do. You might have been arrested," she said, ever so gently. Then she added: "And it has cost me my job."
"That is the only thing that worries me," he rejoined promptly.
"You need not mind, sir. I really am not sorry. I could not have stood it much longer. And Mr. Sellers paid yesterday."
"So they don"t owe you much on account, then," Tunis said soberly.
"I came away without paying for my dinner. I"ll pay the worth of my check to you; that"ll help some."
For the first time she laughed. Once he had sat all afternoon in a gully back of Big Wreck Cove in the pine woods and listened to the cheerful gurgle of a spring bubbling from under a stone. That silvery chuckle was repeated in this girl"s laugh With all her timidity and shyness, she was naturally a cheerful body. That laugh was quite involuntary.
"I think I may be able to get along," she said, with that quiet tone of finality which Tunis felt would keep the boldest man at a distance. "It is difficult, however, to get a position without references."
"I"ll go back and wring one out of him--when the cop has gone,"
grinned Tunis.
"I don"t think a reference from Mr. Sellers would do me much good,"
she sighed. "But at the time I took the place I was quite desperate."
The captain of the _Seamew_ made no comment. They were walking up the hill through a quiet street. Of course, there was no pursuit.
But the young man began to feel that he might have done the girl more harm than good by espousing her cause in the restaurant.
Perhaps he had been too impulsive.
"You--you can find other and more pleasant work, I am sure," he said with hesitation. "I hope you will forgive me for thrusting myself into your concerns, but I really could not stand for that man backing up your customer instead of you. He did order meringue pie.
I heard him."
She smiled, and he caught the faint flicker of it as it curved her lips and made her eyes shine for an instant. Minute following minute, she was becoming more attractive. His voice trembled when he spoke again: