Jailer--eh?"
Mr. Powell walked away from the mate and when at some distance said,
"Damn!" quite heartily. It was a confounded nuisance. It had ceased to
be funny; that hostile word "jailer" had given the situation an air of
reality.
* * * * *
Franklin's grotesque mortal envelope had disappeared from the poop to
seek its needful repose, if only the worried soul would let it rest a
while. Mr. Powell, half sorry for the thick little man, wondered whether
it would let him. For himself, he recognized that the charm of a quiet
watch on deck when one may let one's thoughts roam in space and time had
been spoiled without remedy. What shocked him most was the implied
aspersion of complicity on Mrs. Anthony. It angered him. In his own
words to me, he felt very "enthusiastic" about Mrs. Anthony.
"Enthusiastic" is good; especially as he couldn't exactly explain to me
what he meant by it. But he felt enthusiastic, he says. That silly
Franklin must have been dreaming. That was it. He had dreamed it all.
Ass. Yet the injurious word stuck in Powell's mind with its associated
ideas of prisoner, of escape.
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