“I reckon I can afford to have you loose, too, now that you can't tell me my business in front of a lot of skylarkers throwing kisses right and left!”
“Father! Oh, oh!” She put her hands to her face.
Captain Candage seemed to be having some trouble in keeping up his rôle of a bucko shipmaster; he shifted his eyes from Mayo's scowl and surveyed his daughter with uncertainty while he scratched his ear.
“When a man ain't boss on his own schooner he might as well stop going to sea,” he muttered. “Some folks knows it's the truth, being in a position to know, and others has to be showed!” He went stamping up the companionway into the night.
Captain Mayo waited, for some minutes. The girl did not lift her head.
“About that—What he said about—You understand! I know better!” he faltered.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, gratefully, still hiding her face from him.
“Men sometimes do very foolish things.”
“I didn't know my father could be like this.”
“I was thinking about the men who came and annoyed him. I can understand how he felt, because I am 'a 'native' myself.”