“Why, Zar,” laughed Miss Gale, “and you such a good church member!”
“Well, den, if yo’ Paw boun’ to go aftah de sho’ nuff pole, let him go, but don’ you go. You cain’t he’p him any!”
“But, Zar, you know I wouldn’t leave Papa. I never could.”
The old woman tossed her head.
“Humph! Bettah not be too suah!” She regarded me with a fierceness that somehow warmed me to the soul. “Dey ain’ no man livin’ I’d go to de Souf Pole foh,” she concluded, and with this final shot she disappeared, and went rumbling down the companion-way, “no, sah, not even if I could be wid him all de way an’ back again.”
“See, there’s a vessel,” said Edith Gale. “Bring the glass, please, and let’s try to make her out.”
I hastened to obey, though with no great interest in the result. The tropics and distant vessels had been wonderfully fascinating to me, but just at this moment I was dwelling fondly on Zar’s parting salute.
A little later she sought me again.
“Look heah,” she counselled solemnly, “you turn dis ship right ’round, now, an’ go back home. You go off down dar wid my Miss Edith, an’ bofe die an’ get all froze stiff, an’ den what good is you to each other, I like to know? What good is you?”
Zar had meant this for remonstrance and admonition, but I was her sworn friend and champion from that moment.