"Notice my language now? Never a taint of the beach lingo in it. I rubbed all that out. Aye, McTee, it took me ten years to educate myself for that girl's sake. In the meantime, I made money, as I've said. Ten years of that!
"Beatrice was in college, and six months ago I got the word that she had graduated. A month later I heard that she was going into a decline. It was nothing very serious, but the doctors feared for the strength of her lungs. It made me glad. Now I knew that she would need me. An old man is like a woman, McTee; he needs to have things dependent on him.
"I turned everything I had into cash. I did it so hurriedly that I must have lost close to twenty per cent on the forced sales. What did I care? I had enough, and I made myself into a grandfather who could meet Beatrice's educated friends on their own level.
"I kept this old ship, the Heron, out of the list of my boats. I am going back to Beatrice with gold in my hands and gold in my brain! All for her. But is she not worth it? Look!"
He thrust the second portrait into McTee's hands. It showed a rather thin-faced girl with abnormally large eyes and a rather pathetic smile. It was an appealing face rather than a pretty one.
"Beautiful!" said McTee with forced enthusiasm.
"Yes, beautiful! A little pinched, perhaps, but she'll fill out as she grows older. And those are her grandmother's eyes! Aye!"
He took the photograph and touched it lightly.
His voice grew lower, and the roughness was plainly a tremolo now: "The doctors say she's sick, a little sick, quite sick, in fact. Twice every day I make them send me wireless reports of her condition. One day it's better—one day it's worse."
He began to walk the cabin, his step marvelously elastic and nervous for so aged a man.