"Hold your horses, Mr. Happen-so," said Cad Sills. "There's no harm in that. I was damned and basted good and brown before you ever took me across your little checkered apron."
She looked at him almost wistfully, as if she had need of him. With her wet hair uncoiling to the floor, she looked as if she had served, herself, for a fateful living figurehead, like her mother before her. The bit of coral was still slung round her throat. The harbor master recalled with what a world of meaning she had caught it between her teeth on the night of his rescue—the eyes with a half-wistful light as now.
"Come," she said, "Harbor Master. I wasn't good to you, that's true; but still you have done me a wrong in your turn, you say?"
"I hope God will forgive me," said the harbor master.
"No doubt of that, little man. But maybe you would feel none the worse for doing me a favor, feeling as you do."
"Yes, yes."
Her hand sought his. "You see me—how I am. I shall not survive my child, for my mother did not before me. Listen. You are town clerk. You write the names of the new born on a sheet of ruled paper and that is their name?"
Rackby nodded.
"So much I knew—Come. How would it be if you gave my child your name—Rackby? Don't say no to me. Say you will. Just the scratching of a pen, and what a deal of hardship she'll be saved not to be known as Cad Sills over again."
Her hand tightened on his wrist. Recollecting how they had watched the tide horse over Pull-an'-be-Damned thus, he said, eagerly, "Yes, yes, if so be 'tis a she," thinking nothing of the consequences of his promise.