Ruth turned her large blue eyes on her friend with a look that made them larger and, if possible, bluer than ever. She suddenly began to feel as deep an interest in the captain’s business as in her own.
“This door?” she said, pointing to it emphatically.
“Yes, that door. Widow Bright lives there, don’t she?”
“Yes—oh! yes,” said Ruth, squeezing her heart tighter.
“Well, I’ve come here to search for a long-lost sister.”
“Oh!” gasped Ruth.
But she got no time to gasp anything more, for the impatient captain had pushed the door open without knocking, and stood in the middle of the widow’s kitchen.
Mrs Bright was up to the elbows in soap-suds at the moment, busy with some of the absent Billy’s garments. Beside her sat Mrs Joe Davidson, endeavouring to remove, with butter, a quantity of tar with which the “blessed babby” had recently besmeared herself.
They all looked up at the visitors, but all remained speechless, as if suddenly paralysed, for the expression on our big captain’s face was wonderful, as well as indescribable. Mrs Bright opened her eyes to their widest, also her mouth, and dropped the Billy-garments. Mrs Davidson’s buttery hands became motionless; so did the “babby’s” tarry visage. For three seconds this lasted. Then the captain said, in the deepest bass notes he ever reached—
“Sister Nellie!”