“Um-hm, I think you have tried. I don't mind tellin' you that it has pleased me consid'ble to watch you try. I don't mean by that,” he added, with a slight curve of the lip, “that you'd win first prize as a lightnin'-calculator even yet, but you're a whole lot better one than you used to be. I've been considerable encouraged about you; I don't mind tellin' you that either. . . . And,” he added, after another interval during which he was, apparently, debating just how much of an admission it was safe to make, “so far as I can see, this poetry foolishness of yours hasn't interfered with your work any to speak of.”
Albert smiled. “Thanks, Grandfather,” he said.
“You're welcome. So much for that. But there's another side to our relations together, yours and mine, that I haven't spoken of to you afore. And I have kept still on purpose. I've figgered that so long as you kept straight and didn't go off the course, didn't drink or gamble, or go wild or the like of that, what you did was pretty much your own business. I've noticed you're considerable of a feller with the girls, but I kept an eye on the kind of girls and I will say that so far as I can see, you've picked the decent kind. I say so far as I can see. Of course I ain't fool enough to believe I see all you do, or know all you do. I've been young myself, and when I get to thinkin' how much I know about you I try to set down and remember how much my dad didn't know about me when I was your age. That—er—helps some toward givin' me my correct position on the chart.”
He paused. Albert's brain was vainly striving to guess what all this meant. What was he driving at? The captain crossed his legs and continued.
“I did think for a spell,” he said, “that you and Helen Kendall were gettin' to understand each other pretty well. Well, Helen's a good girl and your grandma and I like her. Course we didn't cal'late anything very serious was liable to come of the understandin', not for some time, anyhow, for with your salary and—well, sort of unsettled prospects, I gave you credit for not figgerin' on pickin' a wife right away. . . . Haven't got much laid by to support a wife on, have you, Al?”
Albert's expression had changed during the latter portion of the speech. Now he was gazing intently at his grandfather and at the letter in the latter's hands. He was beginning to guess, to dread, to be fearful.
“Haven't got much to support a wife on, Al, have you?” repeated Captain Zelotes.
“No, sir, not now.”
“Um. . . . But you hope to have by and by, eh? Well, I hope you will. But UNTIL you have it would seem to older folks like me kind of risky navigatin' to—to . . . Oh, there was a letter in the mail for you this mornin, Al.”
He put down the envelope he had hitherto held in his hand and, reaching into his pocket, produced another. Even before he had taken it from his grandfather's hand Albert recognized the handwriting. It was from Madeline.