However, Dolly was quick to understand and caught his hands again, exclaiming:
“You’re to have your vacation on our Water Lily! I see, I see! Goody! Aunt Betty, isn’t that fine? Next to Molly darling I’d rather have you.”
Everybody laughed at this frank statement, even Dolly herself; yet promptly adding the name of Melvin Cook to her list of passengers. Then as he walked forward over the plank to where Jim Barlow smilingly awaited him, carrying his small suit-case—his only luggage, she called after him:
“I hope you brought your bugle! Then we can have ‘bells’ for time, as on the steamer!”
He nodded over his shoulder and Dorothy strained her eyes toward the next car approaching over the street line, while Mrs. Calvert asked:
“For whom are we still waiting, child? Why don’t we go aboard and start?”
“For dear old Cap’n Jack! He’s coming now, this minute.”
All eyes followed hers and beheld an old man approaching. Even at that distance his wrinkled face was so shining with happiness and good nature that they smiled too. He wore a very faded blue uniform made dazzlingly bright by scores of very new brass buttons. His white hair and beard had been closely trimmed, and the discarded cap of a street-car conductor crowned his proudly held head. The cap was adorned in rather shaky letters of gilt: “Water Lily. Skipper.”
Though he limped upon crutches he gave these supports an airy flourish between steps, as if he scarcely needed them but carried them for ornaments. Nobody knew him, except Dorothy; not even Ephraim recognizing in this almost dapper stranger the ragged vagrant he had once seen on a street car.