“Haitch—­o—­double p—­e—­r—­Hopper—­g-r-a—­double s-grass.  Hopper--grass!”

And then he scornfully spat into the river.

Captain Bannister’s face turned a darker red, and he glanced over his shoulder at the man.  Then he bent forward again, peered ahead and under the sail as if sighting our course with great care, and turned the wheel a little.

“Some folks don’t have nothin’ to do but mind other folks’s business for ’em,” he remarked, looking aloft as if speaking to the mast head.

There was silence for a moment.  We felt that the man in the blue shirt had somehow insulted all of us.

“Not that I care what a Pennsylvania Dutchman that aint never been anywhere ‘cept between here an’ Philadelphy a-shovellin’ coal says, anyhow,” he added.

Then he was silent again.

’"Taint as though I give her the name, myself,” he observed, at last.  “Seein’ I just got her a week ago last Saturday.  I asked Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that.  Said his father named her.  Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, or something, but I didn’t like to say so to him.  Seems too bad to waste them gilt letters, or I’d a-had another name on her ’fore this.  I wanted to use as many of them letters as I could, an’ I thought of callin’ her for my aunt, over at Greenland.”

“What is your aunt’s name?” inquired Jimmy Toppan.

“Hannah J. Pettingell.”

“Isn’t that too long a name?”

“Too long?  ’Taint as long as the ‘Abbie and Elizabeth Sweetser’ that I went out to Calcutta in, summer of ’68.  And yer see I could use some of them letters,—­the H, an’ the P, an’ the G,—­but not all of ’em.”

“I don’t think I like that name as well as ‘Hoppergrass,’” said Jimmy.

“Anything’s better’n that,” replied the Captain, decidedly.  “Besides, my aunt was a sort of benefactor of mine,—­she always said I was her fav’rite nephew.”

“Is she dead?”

“Died seven year ago this spring, while I was in New Orleans.  She left me her second best ear-trumpet,—­she was deef as a post.  She had two of ’em.  One was a rubber toob sort of thing,—­pretty nigh four foot long.  She only used that on Sundays, an’ when the minister called.  She left me the other, an’ I’ve got it to home, over the parlor mantelpiece.”

I remembered seeing it there, when I had called on the Captain.  He lived all alone on West Injy Lane, in a house full of cats and curiosities.  The ear-trumpet always had a bouquet of dried flowers stuffed in the big end, and I had supposed that it was a speaking-trumpet.  I thought the Captain had used it to shout orders through, when his ship was going round Cape Horn in a gale.  It disappointed me to hear that it was nothing but his aunt’s ear-trumpet.  And I couldn’t see why Miss Hannah Pettingell, who had only left the Captain her ear-trumpet (and the second-best one, besides) had any right to have the boat’s name changed in her honor.