Now he was "wanted in the hall by a man with a little girl."
But there was no man visible in the hall, only a little barefooted girl asleep—fast asleep upon his lounge. He could hear her breathing, see her face, and he knew in a moment who she was.
He looked sharply at her, back to the door which was closed, forward to the front door which was drawn to, and around the empty hall.
Then slowly and as if fearful of being caught he went nearer to the sofa, and looked down at this little creature—blood of his blood—who had appeared before him again. Her lashes lay still on her rosy sun-tanned cheeks, her curly hair was in confusion upon the red cushion, her bare feet were upon another. Such a pretty tired child she looked although she was but a tattered and soiled representative of the small pink-bonneted maiden he had seen only the other day.
He knew the story of her "career" now, and of her desire to be a self-made woman. John had told him about her in speaking of his own ambition. The captain's slow mind went back to the time when his own "career" had been forced upon him, when he had only too often "slept out." And as remembrance after remembrance awoke, his heart warmed strangely to this brown-haired girl who seemed to be always stumbling into his pathway.
Dirty, ragged imp as she was, that strange inexplicable sense of kinship stirred within him. Stirred as it had never stirred towards alien John, who was after all only the son of his first love's son, with no blood of his at all in him; stirred as it had stirred towards no one living since his daughter had left him more than seventeen years ago.
He put out one hand and touched her hair (she could not know, no one could know, of course)—his only daughter's little child!
And Betty slept on. Had she but known it, a bent-shouldered old gentleman, who might have exerted a wonderful influence over her whole life, was at that moment looking at her with softened eyes. But great possibilities are frequently blighted by small importunities.
The greengrocer chose this moment to open the front door and look into the hall, and the captain saw him, started, and lost his feeling of kinship for the sleeper.
"Good evenin'," said the greengrocer blandly, "I found her about an hour ago, an' came straight 'ome with her."