“About you.”
“About me?” He was alarmed now. “What about me an’ Washington?”
“Well, if you’ll just climb down I’ll tell you,” promised Babs, determined to get him to a less distracting spot. “We’ll go first, and you come right straight along.”
Perhaps his alarm accounted for his final obedience, but at last he did condescend to come down.
And it was on Captain Quiller’s porch that Babs unfolded her story. The setting, Cara thought, was like a scene in a play. The old captain in the funny old armchair with a telegraph-wire glass on each chair leg. Then Nicky—he looked like a picture that might have been found somewhere in Europe. He was picturesquely ragged, as Cara saw him. His brown skin toned in with the faded brown khaki garments he wore, his one suspender doing valiant duty across his small shoulder.
His hair was black and too long for a boy, but it curled up jauntily, and made the little fellow look quite handsome, both girls thought.
“You come here, son,” the captain ordered. “You’re worse than a grasshopper. Can’t pin you down, nohow. There, you sit right here,” he indicated the arm of the chair, and the boy awkwardly perched himself upon it.
Nicky’s fear at anything official had now left him. He instinctively knew that there was nothing wrong. They wouldn’t be smiling and happy had there been.
Babs tried to explain about the letter but it was hard work. Smart as the youngster was he couldn’t understand why falling off a bicycle, with a can of kerosene oil, was anything to be proud of.
“But you saved the light from going out,” Cara explained. “If the light had gone out in the storm, ships might have been wrecked and lives lost.”