“Perhaps you never had the other either.”
“That’s true—I left England through lack of it.”
“I shouldn’t have guessed that. Perhaps you’ll gain it in this country.”
Scarlett looked at her, but her eyes were again fixed on the point of her shoe.
“Well, Rosebud—flirting as usual?” Captain Summerhayes, clad in blue serge, with his peaked cap on the back of his head, came labouring up the path, and sat heavily on the garden-seat. “I never see such a gal—always with the boys when she ought to be cooking the dinner.”
“Father!” exclaimed Rose, flushing red, though she well knew the form that the Pilot’s chaff usually took. “How can you tell such fibs? You forget that Mr. Scarlett is not one of the old cronies who understand your fun.”
“There, there, my gal.” The Pilot laid his great brown hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Don’t be ruffled. Let an old sailor have his joke: it won’t hurt, God bless us; it won’t hurt more’n the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly. But you’re that prim and proper, that staid and straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of ’em. It takes a lot to goad ’em to it, but once their hair’s on end, it’s time a sailor went to sea, and a landsman took to the bush. It’s simply terrible. Them mild ’uns, Mr. Scarlett, beware of ’em.”
“Father, do stop!” cried Rose, slapping the Pilot’s broad back with her soft, white hand.
“All right,” said her father, shrinking from her in mock dread; “stop that hammerin’.”
“Tell us about the fever-ship, and what they’re doing with Sartoris,” said Scarlett.