“He’ll pull through, I hope and believe,” the doctor replied. “He is sleeping now and since he is so thoroughly exhausted he may sleep for a long time, but when he has recovered enough to sit up, I’ll send over to the island for you, Rilla, if your grand-dad will permit you to come. Sometimes pleasant companionship does more than medicine to help young people to recuperate.”
“I’d like to come,” Muriel replied almost shyly, and yet eagerly. Then her hazel eyes were lifted inquiringly. “May I, Grand-dad?”
It was a hard moment for the old man who had been hating city folks for many years, but he hesitated only a second, then he said: “Lem, I sort o’ feel as all this has been my fault and if yo’ think the boy’ll get on even keel quicker if fust mate here is on deck, now and then, yo’ can count on it, Rilly gal will come.”
Doctor Winslow held out his hand. “Thanks, Ezra,” he said hastily. “You’re more like what you used to be long ago and I’m mighty glad to see it.” Then in an earnest tone, he added: “Gene will take the place to Muriel of the older brother that every girl in this world ought to have, some one near her own age to fight her battles, to protect her when the need arises. That’s the sort of a friend Gene will be to your little girl, Ezra. I’ll give you my word on it, because I know him, as I knew his father before him. A finer man never lived, and like the father is the son.”
When Cap’n Ezra and Muriel were again on the main road, the girl said, “Grand-dad, bein’ as we’re in Tunkett, let’s go over and s’prise Uncle Barney.”
When Rilla had been a very little girl, at Doctor Winslow’s suggestion, she had adopted that good man as an uncle, but when Captain Barney heard her prattling “Uncle Lem” he declared that he wasn’t going to be left out of the family circle as far as she was concerned, and from that day the kindly old Irishman had been proud indeed to be called “Uncle Barney” by the little maid who was the idol of his heart.
They found the fisherman sitting in the sun in front of his cabin. He was whittling out a mast for a toy schooner that he was making for Zoeth Wixon, a little crippled boy who lived in the shack about an eighth of a mile farther along on the sand dunes.
Captain Barney looked up with a welcoming smile. Indeed his kindly Irish face fairly beamed when he saw who his visitors were. Rising, he limped indoors and brought out his one best chair, a wooden rocker with a gay silk patchwork tidy upon it.
All of the fisherfolk in the neighborhood had put together the Christmas before and had purchased the gift for the old bachelor, who was always doing some little thing to add to their good cheer.
“His house is that empty lookin’, with nothin’ to set on but boxes and casks,” the mother of little Zoeth had said, “an’ he’s allays whittlin’ suthin’ to help pass the time away for my little Zo, or tellin’ him yarns as gives him suthin’ to think about fo’ days. I’d like to be gettin’ Cap’n Barney a present as would make his place look more homelike.”