“We have many such friends, I am thankful to say,” Mrs. Royal replied, “and we don’t have to go to the city for them, either.”

“No?  Well, I’m real glad to hear that,” and the captain blew a big cloud of smoke into the air.  “I never made many friends in my life.  Guess I was too cranky; at any rate, that’s what Betsey says, and I guess she must understand me by this time, ha, ha!”

“You must not judge yourself too harshly, captain,” Parson Dan replied.  “Anyway, if you don’t make many friends, you are able at times to be a friend to others.  I wish to thank you for what you did for our little boy to-day.”

“So ye’ve heard all about it, eh?” and the captain fixed his keen eyes upon the parson’s face.

“Only partly, captain.  Rodney told Mrs. Royal some of the story this evening, and I was just going over to hear it all from you as you entered.”

“It was a mean trick that Tom Dunker tried on him to-day,” the visitor returned, “and I’m sorry that I didn’t give the coward a bigger dose than I did.  Oh, how he did squawk when I got both of my hands upon his measly carcass.  I guess him and that boy Sammie of his will learn to leave decent people alone after this.”

“Why, what about Sammie?” the Royals asked.

“What! haven’t ye heard?”

“No, not a word.”

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all!  And Rod never told ye?”

“He said nothing to us about Sammie.”

Captain Josh looked first at the clergyman and then at Mrs. Royal with an expression of doubt in his eyes.

“And so ye say he didn’t tell ye anything?” he finally blurted out, while his stick came down with a bang upon the carpet.  “If any one else had said that I wouldn’t believe him.  To think of a boy doin’ what he did and not rushin’ home all excited, and blattin’ out his yarn.  But, then, I always knew there was extra stuff in that lad.  I have had my eyes on him ever since the mornin’ I gave him a cow, ho, ho!” and the captain leaned back and laughed heartily as the recollection of the “cow incident” came back to him.  “That was my first present,” he continued, “but it isn’t my last, not by a long jugful, no, sir-ree.”

“But what did Rodney do, captain?” the parson enquired.  “We are very anxious to hear.”

“Do!  What did he do, eh?  Why, he walked right over Sammie Dunker, that’s what he did.  Oh, I heard all about it at the store that very night.  Sammie has been a regular chip of the old Dunker block ever since he started fer school.  He bullied all the little chaps, and had them all scared to a shadder.  But when he butted up aginst Rod it was a different proposition, ho, ho!  I’d like to have been there.”

“Do you mean that Rodney was fighting Sammie Dunker?” the clergyman asked, with a note of severity in his voice.  “I am astonished.”

“Oh, no, there was no fightin’, parson.  Sammie didn’t fight; that’s not the Dunker way.  But he hurt little Nancy Garvan, and when Rod told him to stop, he slapped him in the face.  Rod then walked into him and gave him two black eyes, a bloody nose, and left him sprawlin’ upon the floor.  That was all there was about it.  Oh, no, there was no fightin’.”