"That's all right," said the captain, amiably. He drank some beer and, leaning back on the seat, knitted his brows thoughtfully.
"He admired her from the first," he said, slowly. "I saw that. Does she like him, I wonder?"
"It looks like it," was the reply.
The captain shook his head. "They'd make a fine couple," he said, slowly. "As fine as you'd see anywhere. It's fate again. Perhaps he was meant to admire her; perhaps millions of years ago——"
"Yes, yes, I know," said Hartley, hastily; "but to prevent it."
"Fate can't be prevented," said the captain, who was now on his favourite theme. "Think of the millions of things that had to happen to make it possible for those two young people to meet and cause this trouble. That's what I mean. If only one little thing had been missing, one little circumstance out of millions, Joan wouldn't have been born; you wouldn't have been born."
Mr. Hartley attempted to speak, but the captain, laying down his pipe, extended an admonitory finger.
"To go back only a little way," he said, solemnly, "your father had the measles, hadn't he?"
"I don't know—I believe so," said Hartley.
"Good," said the captain; "and he pulled through 'em, else you wouldn't have been here. Again, he happened to go up North to see a friend who was taken ill while on a journey, and met your mother there, didn't he?"