"Well, what if they were—ain't she pretty enough?" he burst out. "I told her she'd have 'em all crazy, and I hear Bart ain't done nothin' but follow in her wake since he seen her launched."
Martha stepped closer to the captain and held her fist in his face.
"He's got to stop it. Do ye hear me?" she shouted. "If he don't there'll be trouble, for you and him and everybody. It's me that's crazy, not him."
"Stop it!" roared the captain, straightening up, the glasses on the sideboard ringing with his sudden lurch. "My boy keep away from the daughter of Morton Cobden, who was the best friend I ever had and to whom I owe more than any man who ever lived! And this is what you traipsed up here to tell me, is it, you mollycoddle?"
Again Martha edged nearer; her body bent forward, her eyes searching his—so close that she could have touched his face with her knuckles.
"Hold your tongue and stop talkin' foolishness," she blazed out, the courage of a tigress fighting for her young in her eyes, the same bold ring in her voice. "I tell ye, Captain Holt, it's got to stop short off, and NOW! I know men; have known 'em to my misery. I know when they're honest and I know when they ain't, and so do you, if you would open your eyes. Bart don't mean no good to my bairn. I see it in his face. I see it in the way he touches her hand and ties on her bonnet. I've watched him ever since the first night he laid eyes on her. He ain't a man with a heart in him; he's a sneak with a lie in his mouth. Why don't he come round like any of the others and say where he's goin' and what he wants to do instead of peepin' round the gate-posts watchin' for her and sendin' her notes on the sly, and makin' her lie to me, her old nurse, who's done nothin' but love her? Doctor John don't treat Miss Jane so—he loves her like a man ought to love a woman and he ain't got nothin' to hide—and you didn't treat your wife so. There's something here that tells me"—and she laid her hand on her bosom—"tells me more'n I dare tell ye. I warn ye now ag'in. Send him to sea—anywhere, before it is too late. She ain't got no mother; she won't mind a word I say; Miss Jane is blind as a bat; out with him and NOW!"
The captain straightened himself up, and with his clenched fist raised above his head like a hammer about to strike, cried:
"If he harmed the daughter of Morton Cobden I'd kill him!" The words jumped hot from his throat with a slight hissing sound, his eyes still aflame.
"Well, then, stop it before it gets too late. I walk the floor nights and I'm scared to death every hour I live." Then her voice broke. "Please, captain, please," she added in a piteous tone. "Don't mind me if I talk wild, my heart is breakin', and I can't hold in no longer," and she burst into a paroxysm of tears.
The captain leaned against the sideboard again and looked down upon the floor as if in deep thought. Martha's tears did not move him. The tears of few women did. He was only concerned in getting hold of some positive facts upon which he could base his judgment.