"You'll be careful, won't you now? Mrs M—fus'll be coming round, certain, for half-a-pound of bacon; And that P—fus girl for candles, if not for sugar. You've to serve neither, mind, until you see their money."
"Yes, dear. What excuse shall I make?" The man's voice was weary but patient. The tone of it set a chord humming faintly somewhere in Captain Cai's memory: but his mind worked slowly and (as he would have put it) wanted sea-room, to come about.
They had taken but a few steps, however, when in the narrow street, known as Dolphin Row, he pulled up with all sail shaking.
"That there party as we passed in the shop—"
"He's my father," said the child quickly.
"And you're Tabb's child. . . . You don't tell me that was Lijah Tabb, as used to be master o' the Uncle an' Aunt?"
"I don't tell you anything," said the child, and added, "he's a different man altogether."
"That's curious now." Captain Cai walked on a pace or two and halted again. "But you're Tabb's child," he insisted. "And, by the trick of his voice, if that wasn't Lijah—"
"His name is Elijah."
"Eh?" queried Captain Cai, rubbing his ear. "But I heard tell," he went on in a puzzled way, searching his memory, "as Lijah Tabb an' Rogers had quarrelled desp'rate an' burnt the papers, so to speak."