“She’s got them all right. They were in the dinghy: she didn’t bring them aboard. You’re worryin’ a lot about the kid.”
“Well, maybe. She’s the jolliest kid I ever struck, and I don’t want any harm to come to her; the pluckiest, too. There’s not many people would go off alone in the dark like that in a place like this.”
“Lord bless your soul!” said Satan. “That’s nothin’, no more than walkin’ down the street to Jude. Do you think sailin’ these seas is all fair-weather work? Why, we’ve been rubbin’ our noses in destruction since she was born. She don’t know what fear is.”
“I could tell that from her face.”
“It’s her face that’s troublin’ me,” said Satan. “Pass me the water pitcher, will you? She’s begun to take after mother. A few months ago she was the homeliest little pup ever littered; but she’s beginnin’ to pick up in looks, and if she takes after her mother’s side in looks and ways—Lord save us!”
“Was your mother good looking?”
“Well,” said Satan, “I don’t know what you call good looks. Pap said she was a nacheral calamity; that was after she’d bolted with the Baptis’ man. It wasn’t the looks so much as the somethin’ about her that’d make a blind man rubber after her if she passed him in the street, that’s what Pap said. He never said no prayers, but when he was talkin’ of Jude I’ve heard him say time and again, ‘Thank the Lord she don’t take after her mother!’ and now it’s comin’ out, same as the ace of spades a shark has hid up his sleeve—and what’s comin’ after, Lord only knows.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I scarce know myself, but Pap said those sort of women couldn’t help bein’ nacheral calamities, attractin’ chaps and turnin’ the world upside down. He said a man, once they’d got the clutch on him, was no more use than a hypnotized fowl, whatever that is. You’ve heard what Jude said about skirts—well, I’m thinkin’ that’s all baby talk, an’ it’s my ’pinion when she gets her nacheral sailing orders she’ll be into skirts some day, same as a dude takes to water, and hypnotizing chaps, same as her mother before her.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Ratcliffe; “but I don’t think she’ll be a natural calamity. I think, from what I have seen of her, that she has a fine character, honest as the day, good as gold.”