“You are a good old man,” returned Ruth, laying her hand on the brown fist of the captain and looking up in his face with the same loving girlish look that she had bestowed on him many a time in years past on his frequent visits with foreign toys, “and I shall test your goodness a good deal before I have done with you.”
“Test away, Miss Ruth. You’ll find I can stand a good deal of testin’. I haven’t sailed the salt sea for forty years for nothing.”
“Well then,” said Ruth, looking slightly perplexed again. “What would you do, Captain Bream, if you knew of two ladies who were unable to work, or to find suitable work, and so poor as to be literally starving—what would you do?”
“Give ’em money, of course.”
“But suppose that, owing to some delicacy of feeling, or, perhaps, some sort of mistaken pride, they would not accept money, and flushed very much and felt hurt if you ventured to offer it to them?”
“Why, then, I’d send ’em victuals.”
“But suppose,” continued Ruth, “that there were great difficulties in the way of doing that, and they felt as much objection to receive gratuitous victuals as money, what would you do then? you would not let them starve, would you?”
“Of course not,” returned the captain, promptly. “If it fairly came to that I’d be apt to treat ’em as nurses do obstinate infants and castor oil. I’d take ’em on my knee, force open their mouths, and shove the victuals down their throats.”
Ruth burst into a merry little laugh at this.
“But,” said she, “don’t you think that before proceeding to such forcible treatment you might scheme a little to get them to take it willingly, as nurses sometimes disguise the taste of the oil with coffee or milk?”