Just then I saw the boatman coming who looks after our motor boat, and I tiptoed to him and asked him to go away, and not to come back unless he had quieter boats and would not whistel.  He acted very ugly about it, I must say, but he went.

When I came back, Jane was sitting thinking, with her forhead all puckered.

“What I don’t understand, Bab,” she said, “is, why no noise?”

“Because he is writing,” I explained.  “Although his clothing has been taken away, he is writing.  I don’t think I told you, Jane, but that is his business.  He is a Writer.  And if I tell you his name you will faint with surprise.”

She looked at me searchingly.

“Locked up—­and writing, and his clothing gone!  What’s he writing, Bab?  His Will?”

“He is doing his duty to the end, Jane,” I said softly.  “He is writing the last Act of a Play.  The Company is rehearsing the first two Acts, and he has to get this one ready, though the Heavens fall.”

But to my surprise, she got up and said to me, in a firm voice: 

“Either you are crazy, Barbara Archibald, or you think I am.  You’ve been stuffing me for about a week, and I don’t beleive a Word of it.  And you’ll apologize to me or I’ll never speak to you again.”

She said this loudly, and then went away, And Mr. Beecher said, through the door.

“What the Devil’s the row about?”

Perhaps my nerves were going, or possably it was no luncheon and probably no dinner.  But I said, just as if he had been an ordinary person: 

“Go on and write and get through.  I can’t stew on these steps all day.”

“I thought you were an amiable Child.”

“I’m not amiable and I’m not a Child.”

“Don’t spoil your pretty face with frowns.”

“It’s my face.  And you can’t see it anyhow,” I replied, venting in femanine fashion, my anger at Jane on the nearest object.

“Look here,” he said, through the door, “you’ve been my good Angel.  I’m doing more work than I’ve done in two months, although it was a dirty, low-down way to make me do it.  You’re not going back on me now, are you?”

Well, I was mollafied, as who would not be?  So I said: 

“Well?”

“What did Patten do with my clothes?”

“He took them with him.”  He was silent, except for a muttered word.

“You might throw those Keys back again,” he said.  “Let me know first, however.  You’re the most acurate Thrower I’ve ever seen.”

So I through them through the window and I beleive hit the ink bottle. 
But no matter.  And he tried them, but none availed.

So he gave up, and went back to Work, having saved enough ink to finish with.  But a few minutes later he called to me again, and I moved to the Doorstep, where I sat listening, while aparently admiring the sea.  He explained that having been thus forced, he had almost finished the last Act, and it was a corker.  And he said if he had his clothes and some money, and a key to get out, he’d go right back to Town with it and put it in rehearsle.  And at the same time he would give the Pattens something to worry about over night.  Because, play or no play, it was a Rotten thing to lock a man in a bath-house and take his clothes away.