Teetoncey and Ben O'Neal Read Online Free PDF Page B

I wondered where Mama herself had heard about teas, but it didn't matter. My head swimming with knowledge of Queen Victoria, London Bridge, trains of the Great Northern Railroad where you could eat in a padded chair, horse buses with seats on the roof, I went over to Kilbie Oden's house, a few hammocks up from us.
    Kilbie was in the kitchen, honing fish knives for his papa. Frank Scarborough was there, too. Without his white speckling of niter salve that night, Kilbie's pimples were worse than usual. His red hair wasn't combed. From his neck up, he seemed to be flaming. But out of all the pimples and brick hair came light blue eyes. Kilbie was a startling-looking boy.
    I began to tell them everything that had happened the last two days, but Frank Scarborough, who was as handsome as Kilbie was uncomely, said, "We alriddy heerd." Then I started to tell about London, via Teetoncey, but they weren't interested in that, either.
    Zipping a thin blade back and forth over the hone stone, Kilbie looked up with those stabbing blue eyes. "She ain't gonna be with you long, Ben."
    "How do you know that?" I asked.
    "Filene got word 'bout suppertime from Inspector Timmons that the British consul would leave Norfolk tomorrow an' come out an' pick her up."
    "Who said?"
    Frank opened his mouth. "Luther Gaskins tol' Papa."
    "Why hasn't Filene tol' Mama?" I asked.
    Kilbie thought he knew. "He's feared o' tellin' her, plenty some. He didn't think it'd go this fast. Filene knows your mama is attached to that girl, an' he's lickin his lips tryin to think o' a way to tell her."
    There went a lot of plans. Earlier in the day I had been thinking of using that girl to ease me out of the house. I was already out of my own room and bed, and with her around to jabber about dresses and things there wouldn't be such a ruckus when I went to Norfolk and started asking at the ship chandlers for a cabin boy's berth. No one could accuse me of abandoning Mama if Teetoncey settled in. I said, "The consul can't do that."
    Frank said, "You don't own her." That was true.
    I left Kilbie's house with half a mind to go to Heron Head Station and confront Keeper Midgett but thoughts of such a meeting raised a ticking in my stomach. So I took a long time walking home under the stars, trying to figure out what we might do. The route I followed avoided the beach because all the ghosts of drowned sailors stagger around there at night, a truth and not a rumor.
    What was a certainty was the arrival of the consul in three or four days. Say he'd take the train to New Bern or Elizabeth City, on the mainland, he'd then get aboard either the white steamers
Newbern
or
Neuse
and dock at Skyco, on the west side of Roanoke Island; then somebody would pick him up in a Creef, a sharp-prowed shad boat, and sail him on down here. The steamers made a mail, iced-fish, and passenger stop at Skyco in early morning or late evening. But the whole trip from Norfolk, train included, wasn't more than two or three days. There was precious little time.
    It seemed to me there was only one thing to do—
hide Teetoncey.
Kidnap her, if she was willing.
    If the British consul, a miserable man named Henry Calderham, Esquire, could not find her, he could not spirit her away to England. On the other hand, it occurred to me that Teetoncey might not want to be hidden on the Outer Banks; she might even want to go back to London. On second thought, had it been me I would welcome the consul, as foul a man as he was. I would welcome any man, woman, or child who got me off die Banks.
    Reaching home about ten, I decided not to inform Mama. Maybe Filene would come over in the morning with the bad news. Slipping in beside her, I barely listened while she jabbered on in a low voice about other things the girl had said while I was gone. Of some interest was the fact that Tee had crossed the ocean in an iron steamship named
Lucania
in less than six days. But that information was not of much interest in view of our new