Mariana shot a glance at him. There was fire in it, kindled of what fuel she knew not; but the flame of it seemed to scorch her. The cap'n was staring at the andirons and did not see it.
"I'd give a good deal," he said musingly, "if I thought I could ever come acrost such a housekeeper as you be, Mariana. But there! that's snarin' a white blackbird."
"Cap'n," said Mariana.
Her tone seemed to leap at him, and he had to look at her.
"Why, Mariana!" he returned. Her face amazed him. It was full of light, but a light that glittered. "By George," said he, "you looked that minute for all the world jest as your brother Elmer did when Si Thomson struck him in town meetin'. Si was drunk an' Elmer never laid up a thing after the blow was over an' done; but that first minute he looked as if he was goin' to jump. What is it, Mariana?"
"Cap'n," said Mariana. She was used to calling him by his first name in their school-day fashion, but her new knowledge of life seemed for the moment to have made all the world alien to her. "Cap'n, if anybody said you couldn't do a thing, wouldn't you say to yourself you'd be—wouldn't you say you'd do it?"
"Why, I dunno," said the cap'n, wondering. "Mebbe I would if 'twas somethin' I thought best to do."
"No, no. If 'twas somethin'—well, s'pose somebody said you was a Chinyman, wouldn't you prove you wa'n't?"
"Why," said the cap'n mildly, "anybody'd see I wa'n't, minute they looked into my face. Nobody'd say anybody was a Chinyman if they wa'n't."
Mariana was able to laugh a little here, though a tear did run over her cheek in a hateful, betraying way. She wiped it off, but the cap'n saw it.