She moved aside and gathered up her dress so that there was ample room for him upon the bench. Yet, though it was done coldly, imperturbably, without a glimmer of a smile, the man whom she had sworn to kill suspected nothing but habitual melancholy.
“Your boy was here a minute or two ago.”
“Sparkin? I caught him on the run, and gave him a tweak of the ear to last for a week.”
“The child seems very fond of you.”
“Perhaps because I have never spared the rope’s-end when necessary, and perhaps because he has never caught me lying.”
“How did you come by him?”
“A mere chance. He was no man’s child—a kind of wild-cat that haunted the river-side and lived as best it could. It was before I sailed three years ago that I saw the youngster outside a Greenwich tavern. He was standing up in his rags to some big, well-conditioned bully of a school-boy, and thrashing him squarely by sheer pluck.”
“That is how you became friends?”
“I took him to sea with me, and grew fond of the youngster in spite of his insolence, which I chastened like a father. And the humor of it was that after pulling him out of a Greenwich gutter, the boy pulled a ship’s crew out of a Barbary prison. I have told you that tale before.”
Barbara watched his face while he was speaking with an intentness that made him feel the nearness of her eyes.