"Will I?" returned Old Captain, a bit doubtfully. "Well, I may get used to 'em. They does dress up a bed."
In spite of the squealing kittens, in spite of the many small tasks that Jeanne found to do, many times that morning her eyes filled with tears. Poor daddy and Michael—to go like that. Curiously enough, the remembrance of a drowned sailor, whose body had once been washed up on the beach near the dock, brought Jeanne a certain sense of comfort.
The sailor had looked as if he hadn't cared. He was dead and he didn't mind. He had looked peaceful—almost happy; as if his body was just an old one that he had been rather glad to throw away.
"His soul," Léon Duval had said, when he found his small daughter in the little crowd of bystanders on the beach, "isn't there. That is only his body. The man himself is elsewhere."
"Father doesn't care," said Jeanne, and tried to be happy in that comforting thought.
That afternoon, they visited Mollie.
"This bein' a special occasion," said Old Captain, "I got both fruit and flowers. You kin carry the bouquet."
It took courage to carry it, but Jeanne rose nobly to the occasion. She couldn't help giggling, however, when she tried to picture Mrs. Huntington, suddenly presented with a similar offering. There was a tiger lily in the center, surrounded by pink sweet-peas. Outside of this, successive rings of orange marigolds, purple asters, scarlet geraniums and candytuft, with a final fringe of blue cornflowers.
"If I meet that fat boy," thought Jeanne, wickedly, "I'll bow to him."
"Once I took a all-white one," confessed Captain Blossom, with a pleased glance at the bouquet, "but the nurse, she said 'Bring colored flowers—they're more cheerful.' 'Make it cheerful,' says I, to Mrs. S. Now that there is cheerful, ain't it?"