Thus things stood while Janet, coiled in the meshes, lay laughing up at Billy.
"What do you think of your haul, Cap'n Billy Daddy?" The man sighed. "You wouldn't let those dreadful old sharks—they are sharks, Cap'n—you wouldn't let them hurt your poor little fish, now would you?" The rippling, girlish laugh jarred Billy's nerves. He must take a new tack.
"See here, Janet, do ye mind this? Ye ain't jes' my child—Lord knows ye ain't—yer hers!"
"Hers?"
"Yes."
"Ah! you mean my mother." The net lay quite still. Having no memory of the mother, Janet was not deeply impressed. "I know, Cap'n; when you are in a difficulty you always bring—'her'—in,—what she would like, and what she wouldn't. It's my belief, Cap'n, she'd have done and thought exactly as we told her to."
"'T ain't so, nuther! She had heaps of common sense, an' as she got near port, she saw turrible clear, an' she talked considerable 'bout larnin', an' how it could steer yer craft better than anythin' else; an' she 'lowed if ye was gal or lad, after ye got larnin', she wanted ye should go out int' the world an' test it. She wasn't over sot 'bout the Station. She'd visited other places."
Janet sat up, and idly draped the net about her.
"I suppose if my mother had lived," she said, "I would have listened to her—some. But, Cap'n Daddy, I reckon she would have gone off with me. Like as not we would have taken boarders, but, don't you see, Cap'n, I would have had her?"
"True; an' it's that what's held my hand many's the time. Yer not havin' her has crippled us both. But a summer on the mainland ain't a-goin' t' swamp us, Janet. With the Comrade tied to David's wharf, an' me here, what's goin' t' happen to a—a girl like you?"