The Captain's frown was gone past replacement. But he still felt that he owed something to himself.
"If you was to ask me," he said, turning to Cleggett, "whether what I'd got to say to you would do later, or whether it wouldn't do later, I'd answer you it would, or it wouldn't, all accordin' to whether you wanted to hear it now, or whether you wanted to hear it later. And as far as SAILIN' her is concerned, Mr. Cleggett, I'll SAIL her, whether you turn her into a battleship or into one of these here yachts. I come of a seafarin' fambly."
And then he said to the lady, indicating the tie and bobbing his head forward with a prim little bow: "Thank ye, ma'am."
"Isn't he a duck!" said the lady, following him with her eyes, as he went behind the cabin. There the Cap'n chewed, smoked, and fished, earnestly and simultaneously, for ten minutes.
Indeed, the blonde lady, from the moment when Elmer began to put ice into the box, seemed to have regained her spirits. The little dog, which was an indicator of her moods, had likewise lost its nervousness. When Kuroki had tea ready, the dog lay down at his mistress' feet, beside the table.
"Dear little Teddy," said the lady, patting the animal upon the head.
"Teddy?" said Cleggett.
"I have named him," she said, "after a great American. To my mind, the greatest—Theodore Roosevelt. His championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit themselves is enough in itself to gain him a place in history."
She spoke with a kindling eye, and Cleggett had no doubt that there was before him one of those remarkable women who make the early part of the twentieth century so different from any other historical period. And he was one with her in her admiration for Roosevelt—a man whose facility in finding adventures and whose behavior when he had found them had always made a strong appeal to Cleggett. If he could not have been Cleggett he would have liked to have been either the Chevalier d'Artagnan or Theodore Roosevelt.
"He is a great man," said Cleggett.