“I was saving that name for the handsomest clipper-ship that money could build,” he said.  “But when I married you, little woman, I got something better than a clipper-ship; and when you know sailorman’s natur’ better, you’ll know what that compliment means.  Yes, Providunce sent me here,” continued the Cap’n, poking down his tobacco with broad thumb.  “There I was, swashin’ from Hackenny to t’other place, livin’ on lobscouse and hoss-meat; and here you was, pinin’ away for some one to love you and to talk to you about something sensibler than dropped stitches and croshayed lamp-mats.  Near’s I can find out about your ’sociates round here, you would have got more real sense out of talkin’ with Port and Starboard up there,” he added, pointing to his pet parrots, which had followed him in his wanderings.  “We was both of us hankerin’ for a companion—­I mean a married companion.  And I reckon that two more suiteder persons never started down the shady side—­holt of hands, hey?”

He caught her hands and pulled her near him, and she bent down and kissed his weather-beaten forehead.

At that instant Col.  Gideon Ward came clattering into the yard in his tall wagon.  He glared at this scene of conjugal affection, and then lashed his horse savagely and disappeared in the direction of the barn.

“I read once about a skelington at a feast that rattled his dry bones every time folks there started in to enjoy themselves,” said the Cap’n, after he watched the scowling Colonel out of sight.  “For the last two weeks, Louada Murilla, it don’t seem as if I’ve smacked you or you’ve smacked me but when I’ve jibed my head I’ve seen that ga’nt brother-in-law o’ mine standing off to one side sourer’n a home-made cucumber pickle.”

“It’s aggravatin’ for you, I know it is,” she faltered.  “But I’ve been thinkin’ that perhaps he’d get more reconciled as the time goes on.”

“Reconciled?” snapped the Cap’n, a little of the pepper in his nature coming to the surface.  “If it was any one but you little woman, that talked about me as though I was death or an amputated leg in this family, I’d get hot under the collar.  But I tell ye, we ain’t got many years left to love each other in.  We started pritty late.  We can’t afford to waste any time.  And we can’t afford to have the edge taken off by that Chinese image standin’ around and makin’ faces.  I’ve been thinkin’ of tellin’ him so.  But the trouble is with me that when I git to arguin’ with a man I’m apt to forgit that I ain’t on shipboard and talkin’ to a tar-heel.”

He surveyed his brown fists with a certain apprehensiveness, as though they were dangerous parties over whom he had no control.

“I should dretfully hate to have anything come up between you and Gideon, Cap’n,” she faltered, a frightened look in her brown eyes.  “It wouldn’t settle anything to have trouble.  But you’ve been about so much and seen human nature so much that it seems as though you could handle him different than with—­with—­”