“You see, Dad, it’s because—it’s because books can make you happy while you’re dying, but medicine can only make you miserable while you’re getting well!”
Keturah gave the girl a look in which a skilled observer might have detected something resembling admiration.
“What an upside-down mind you have, child!” she said. “But then,” she allowed, “you use it and do your own thinking!”
“I wish she’d do some of my thinking,” exclaimed Cap’n Smiley, looking ruefully at the checkerboard. “Appears to me as if I had been out-thunk again!” He liked the defeated, “ker-plunk” sound of this past participle of his invention, and always used it to describe Mermaid’s victories.
Mermaid got up, went to the pantry, came back with a pan of sugared crullers, offered her Dad one, took one herself, put up the pan, and then cuddled contentedly against his arm. “I made them myself,” she murmured.
Her Dad stroked her hair. It was remarkably like the colour his own had been before thirty years of beach sunshine—and other things—had bleached the colour out of it.
“What are you going to be when you grow up, Mermaid?” he asked, dreamily.
“I shall try to make you a good home and keep you happy,” she assured him. “I’m knitting the slippers you’ll wear, now.”
They hugged each other in anticipation of their peaceful old age together, and went to bed.