“Notice,” called the old man, seeing faces appear at some of the windows they were passing. “Lost, a black leather bill-case----”
The boy, listening curiously, slid down the steps until he reached the one on which the dog was sitting, and put his arm around its neck. The banister posts hid him from the approaching couple. He could hear Georgina’s eager voice piping up flute-like:
“It’s a pirate dog, Uncle Darcy. He’s named Captain Kidd because he buries his treasures.”
In answer the old man’s quavering voice rose in a song which he had roared lustily many a time in his younger days, aboard many a gallant vessel:
“Oh, my name is Captain Kidd,
And many wick-ud things I did,
And heaps of gold I hid,
As I sailed.”
The way his voice slid down on the word wick-_ud_ made a queer thrilly feeling run down the boy’s back, and all of a sudden the day grew wonderfully interesting, and this old seaport town one of the nicest places he had ever been in. The singer stopped at the steps and Georgina, disconcerted at finding the boy at such close range when she expected to see him far above her, got no further in her introduction to Captain Kidd than “Here he------”
But the old man needed no introduction. He had only to speak to the dog to set every inch of him quivering in affectionate response. “Here’s a friend worth having,” the raggedy tail seemed to signal in a wig-wag code of its own.
Then the wrinkled hand went from the dog’s head to the boy’s shoulder with the same kind of an affectionate pat. “What’s _your_ name, son?”
“Richard Morland.”
“What?” was the surprised question. “Are you a son of the artist Morland, who is visiting up here at the Milford bungalow?”