WHEN, in the morning, I passed from my quarters toward the main room which served me both as living-room and dining hall, I found that my pirate guests were also early risers. I could hear them arguing over some matter, which proved to be no more serious than the question of a cold bath of mornings, Jimmy maintaining that everybody had a cold bath every morning, whereas John insisted with equal heat that nobody ever bathed (“washed,” I think he called it), oftener than once a week, to wit, on Saturdays only. They engaged in a pillow fight to settle it, and as Jimmy had John fairly well smothered by his rapid fire, I voted that the ayes appeared to have it when they referred the point to me.
As we are very remote and never visited in my wilderness home, it is not infrequent that I take my morning meal very much indeed in mufti, although Hiroshimi is always most exact himself. On this morning it occurred to us all that pajamas made a garb more piratical and more nautical than anything else obtainable, so we took breakfast—and I think Hiroshimi never served me a breakfast more delicate and tempting—clad as perhaps the Romans were, if they had pajamas in those times. All went well until the keen eyes of Jimmy, wandering about my place, noted a certain photograph which rested on the top of my piano—where I was much comforted always to have it, especially of an evening, when sometimes I played Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, or other music of the like. It was the picture of the woman who did not know and very likely did not care where, or how, I lived—Helena Emory, to my mind one of the most beautiful women of her day; and I have seen the world’s portraits of the world’s beauties of all recorded days in beauty. Toward this Jimmy ran excitedly—I, with equal speed, endeavoring to divert him from his purpose.
“But it’s my Auntie Helen!” he protested, when I recovered it and placed it in my pocket.
“It is your Auntie fiddlesticks, Jimmy,” said I hastily, hoping my color was not heightened. “It is your grandmother! Finish your breakfast.”
“I guess I ought to know—” he began.
“What!” I rejoined. “Wouldst pit your wisdom against one who has the second sight; have a care, shipmate.”
“It was!” he reiterated. “I know ain’t anybody pretty as she is, so it was.”
“Jimmy L’Olonnois,” said I, “let us reason about this. I——”
“Lemme see it, then. I can tell in a minute. Why don’t you lemme see it, then?” He was eager.
“Shipmate,” I replied to him, “the hand is sometimes quicker than the eye, and the mind slower than the heart. For that reason I can not agree to your request.”