How came he to be of your party? asked the Lieutenant.
At the request of Mr. Webb, who reared and educated him.
His education must be limited.
No, replied the Captain, not limited, but extended. No man on this ship is his superior—few his equal.
This will be new and awkward business for the ladies, different from nursing cats—By the way Captain, I see that you have added another to the list. The one you brought on board appears to have passed her three-score-and-ten. Its coat is as white as snow.
That cat, replied the Captain, has a history, and bears the name of your brother’s daughter, Amy, and Walter would fight for that cat as he would for the one she is named after, and I had to consent that the cat should come on board before he would agree to become my guest.
Perhaps that is the boy’s weakness—that in his younger days, he fell in love with the namesake of this cat.
There is no perhaps about it. It is a fact. Webb informed me, that when he and Walter were viewing the scene of the destruction of his home, the cat came to him, and that then and there Walter raised his hand to heaven, and swore in the presence of his God and his desolate home, that he would never love other than Amy Powers.
And does that love still burn? asked the Lieutenant.