But I guess after all it’s just as well I didn’t.

August 1st. Mr. Fogerty has returned aboard.  My worst fears are realized.  For a long time he has been irritable and uncommunicative with me and has indulged in sly, furtive little tricks unbecoming to a dog of the service.  I have suspected that he was concealing a love affair from me.  This it appears he has been doing and his guilt is heavy upon him.  I realize now for the first time and not without a sharp maternal pang that he has reached an age at which he must make decisions for himself.  I can no longer follow him out into the world upon his nocturnal exploits.  His entire confidence is not mine.  I must be content to share a part of his heart instead of the whole of it.  Like father like son, I suppose.  However, I see no reason for him to put on such airs.  On his return from City Island this time he had somehow contrived to get himself completely shaved up to the shoulders.  The result is startling.  Fogerty looks extremely aristocratic but a trifle foppish.  However, he seems to consider himself the only real four-footed dog in camp.  This is a trifle boring from a dog who has never hesitated to steal from the galley anything that wasn’t a permanent fixture.  I can’t help but feel sorry for him though when I see that far-away look in his eyes.  Sad days I fear are in store for him.  Ah, well, we’re only young once.

August 3d. “Well, now, son,” he was saying, “mind me when I tell yer that I’m not claiming as to ever have seen a mermaid, but what I am saying is this and that is if anybody has ever seen one of them things I’m that man.  I’m not making no false claims, however, none whatsoever.”

I carefully placed my shovel against the wheelbarrow and seating myself upon a stump prepared to listen to my companion.  He was a chief of many cruises and for some unaccountable reason had fixed on me as being a suitable recipient for his discourse.  One more hash mark on his arm would have made him look like a convict.  I listened and in the meanwhile many mounds of sand urgently in need of shoveling remained undisturbed.  Upon this sand I occasionally cast a reflective and apprehensive eye.  The chief, noticing this, nudged me in the ribs with an angular elbow.

“Don’t mind that, sonny,” he said, “I’ll pump the fear-o’-God into the heart of any P.O. what endeavors to disturb you.  Trust me.”

I did.

“Now getting back to this mermaid,” he began in a confidential voice, “what I say as I didn’t claim to have saw.  It happened this way and what I’m telling you, sonny, is the plain, unvarnished facts of the case, take ’em or leave ’em as you will.  They happened and I’m here to tell the whole world so.”

“I have every confidence in you, chief,” I replied mildly.

“It is well you have,” he growled, scanning my face suspiciously.  “It’s well you have, you louse.”

“Why, chief,” I exclaimed in an aggrieved voice, “isn’t that rather an unappetizing word to apply to a fellow creature?”