He had been gone but a minute before Ruth slipped silently around a corner of the verandah. “He says ‘it’s very good’ does he?” she murmured. “Let’s see what our Scotch sailor-artist-critic has done.” But when she looked at the canvas, her pique gave way to genuine admiration. “Oh!” she ejaculated softly. “He is an artist after all!” Then perplexedly. “I wonder where he learned?” Still wondering, she lifted the canvas from the easel and took it up to her room.
They had supper in the big dining-room that evening—it was a special meal for the departing sailors—and Donald wore a white duck shirt with a turn-down collar—a dollar purchase which catered in a measure to his desire for clean white linen. With his face and hands well scrubbed, and his hair brushed, he looked eminently respectable and felt more at ease. Clothes and personal appearance are two extremely important factors in the self-respect of youth—especially so when the admiration of a girl is to be gained. McKenzie’s dollar shirt added enough to his personal appearance to command Ruth’s attention, and during the supper she shot shy glances at him and wondered why she hadn’t noticed what fine eyes and teeth and hands this tanned young seaman possessed. His artistic criticism set her to thinking. She pondered over his manner of conversation and his actions when she and her mother were around. He spoke with a Scottish accent, but then, unlike McGlashan, his language was faultlessly correct. His table manners, she noticed now, were according to all the canons of etiquette. He did not tuck his serviette into his shirt-neck; he wielded his spoon in the prescribed way when taking soup, and he held and used his knife and fork properly and not in the “scrammy-handed” manner she expected from a common sea-boy. The Nickersons were superior people, and noted these things and lived correctly themselves. They were seamen and ship-builders, fish merchants and timber merchants, but others of the family had taken up the higher professional arts and doctors, clergymen and lawyers were numbered among them. The Skipper’s maternal uncle was a lawyer and a member of the Dominion House of Commons—not that this political honor may be cited as a criterion of breed—but it was evidence of the fact that the family were “particular and knowing folk.”
They were to sail for the fishing banks on the morrow, and Judson suggested they have a little family party. Brother Asa and his wife were invited over, and they were bringing with them a cousin who was visiting them; a young woman a year or two older than Ruth. “Now, Sis,” said Jud to his sister, “you can get busy an’ make up a whack of that choc-late fudge for me to take to sea with me. I c’d eat a bar’l of it right now!”
Asa Nickerson, older than Judson, but almost identical in looks, speech and manner, came in with his wife and her cousin Helena Stuart. Helena was petite with soft brown eyes and pretty fair hair—a rather striking girl and with a face and form which matched her hair and eyes, she would attract admiring attention anywhere. When she greeted Ruth and the two were together, Donald thought he had never seen finer-looking girls. Judson was evidently struck with Miss Stuart, and it wasn’t long before he managed to escort her off to the kitchen to superintend his sister’s fudge making. Donald, in the odd habit he had of conjuring up contrasting memories, smiled to himself when the Skipper, in his most polite and persuasive manner, offered Miss Stuart his arm in mock courtesy and led her laughingly away to a candy-boiling. He thought of a rain-lashed, heaving deck and the drumming of a big wind aloft and an oil-skinned, sea-booted Judson leaning over the bridge rail of the Kelvinhaugh and rasping out, “Put yer ruddy guts into it, you lousy hounds, or I’ll bash the ugly mug of th’ swine that hangs back!” with a liberal sprinkling of biting oaths for better measure. Truly, seafarers live lives of contrasts not alone in the element they live part of their lives, but in the nature of their work and the herding of men with men far from refining influences.
Donald was left with the older people, and he sat quietly listening to their small talk. Asa spoke to him once or twice, but eventually got embroiled in a discussion with his parents as to the correct manner in which to feed a nine-months-old child—which discussion, while of interest to married people, bored McKenzie dreadfully, and several times he felt like making a bold move by leaving and repairing to the kitchen, where, from the shrieks and laughter, the girls and the Skipper were having a jolly time over the manufacture of the chocolate confection.
He was about to slip out, when Mrs. Asa went to the piano and commenced running her fingers over the keys. “Play us a tune, Gertrude,” boomed the old ship-builder. “My ol’ favorite, y’know—‘Sweet Dreamland Faces’—an’ ye might sing it too, Gerty-girl.”
The daughter-in-law picked out the music but demurred at the singing. “You know, father, I can’t play and sing at the same time. If I had someone to play, I’d sing. Helena would play for me, but I hate to disturb her. She’s having a good time in the kitchen by the sounds.” Donald, tired of sitting and doing nothing and itching to get his fingers on piano keys once more, rose to his feet. “Possibly I can help you,” he said quietly. “I haven’t played the piano since we left the West Coast, but I’ll try.”
Young Mrs. Nickerson looked somewhat surprised, but smiled and vacated the stool. Donald sat down and fingered the keys. His fingers were stiff with the hard usage of sea-faring, but he swung readily into the easy score, and soon Mrs. Asa was singing the sweet old song in a pleasing voice to his accompaniment. When it was finished amid the plaudits of the listeners, the singer complimented the young fellow on his playing. “You play well,” she said. “Do you sing? I’m sure you do! Won’t you play and sing for us?”
Rather than hazard a resumption of the baby-food conversation, Donald murmured with a self-conscious blush that he would try, and without any preliminaries he touched the keys and in a clear baritone rendered “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon.” As he sang the famous old Scottish song, memories of his mother and home in far-away Scotland surged to mind. He forgot the company and sang with closed eyes. He was lonely and more than a little home-sick, and the yearning suggested by the words and its plaintive air rang in his voice, and his quiet touch on the piano mingled with his singing and combined to make it a song from the heart and soul of a wanderer far from his native land.
“Ye mind me o’ departed joys—