“Poor boy!” she whispered. “I understand! It will come out right if you don't lose courage.”
But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.
The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping and flashing wet gleams as she rolled. Her men were rigging a ladder over the side.
“I want to say whilst we're here together and there's time to say it,” announced Captain Candage, “that we are one and all mighty much obliged for that invite you gave us to come aboard the yacht, sir, and we all know that if—well, if things had been different from what they was you would have used us all right. And what I might say about yachts and the kind of critters that own 'em I ain't a-going to say.”
“You are improving right along, father,” observed Polly Candage, dryly.
“Still, I have my own idees on the subject. But that's neither here nor there. You're a native and I'm a native, and I want ye should just look at that face leaning over the lee rail, there, and then say that now we know that we're among real friends.”
It was a rubicund and welcoming countenance under the edge of a rusty black oilskin sou'wester hat, and the man was manifestly the skipper. Every once in a while he flourished his arm encouragingly.
“Hearty welcome aboard the Reuben and Esther,” he called out when the tender swung to the foot of the ladder. “What schooner is she, there?”
“Poor old Polly,” stated the master, first up the ladder. In his haste to greet the fishing-skipper he left his daughter to the care of Captain Mayo.
“That's too bad—too bad!” clucked the fishing-skipper, full measure of sympathy in his demeanor. “She was old, but she was able, sir!”