FullReads

“It mout hev been stowed away in one of them crates for safe-keeping,” he said, musingly, “and washed off the deck o’ one o’ them Tahiti brigs goin’ down fer oranges. Least-ways, it never got thar from these parts.”

“But it’s a miracle its life was saved at all. It must have been some hours in the water.”

“Them brigs lays their course well inshore, and it was just mebbe a toss up if the vessel clawed off the reef at all! And ez to the child keepin’ up, why, dog my skin! that’s just the contrariness o’ things,” continued Joe, in sententious cynicism. “Ef an able seaman had fallen from the yard-arm that night he’d been sunk in sight o’ the ship, and thet baby ez can’t swim a stroke sails ashore, sound asleep, with the waves for a baby-jumper.”

North, who was half relieved, yet half awkwardly disappointed at not seeing Bessy, ventured to ask how the child was doing.

“She’ll do all right now,” said a frank voice above, and, looking up, North discerned the round arms, blue eyes, and white teeth of the daughter at the window. “She’s all hunky, and has an appetite–ef she hezn’t got her ‘nat’ral nourishment.’ Come, Dad! heave ahead, and tell the stranger what you and me allow we’ll do, and don’t stand there swappin’ lies with him.”

“Weel,” said Trinidad Joe, dejectedly, “Bess allows she can rar that baby and do justice to it. And I don’t say–though I’m her father–that she can’t. But when Bess wants anything she wants it all, clean down; no half-ways nor leavin’s for her.”

“That’s me! go on, Dad–you’re chippin’ in the same notch every time,” said Miss Robinson, with cheerful directness.

“Well, we agree to put the job up this way. We’ll take the child and you’ll give us a paper or writin’ makin’ over all your right and title. How’s that?”

Without knowing exactly why he did, Mr. North objected decidedly.

“Do you think we won’t take good care of it?” asked Miss Bessy, sharply.

“That is not the question,” said North, a little hotly. “In the first place, the child is not mine to give. It has fallen into my hands as a trust,–the first hands that received it from its parents. I do not think it right to allow any other hands to come between theirs and mine.”

Miss Bessy left the window. In another moment she appeared from the house, and, walking directly towards North, held out a somewhat substantial hand. “Good!” she said, as she gave his fingers an honest squeeze. “You ain’t so looney after all. Dad, he’s right! He shan’t gin it up, but we’ll go halves in it, he and me. He’ll be father and I’ll be mother ’til death do us part, or the reg’lar family turns up. Well–what do you say?”

More pleased than he dared confess to himself with the praise of this common girl, Mr. James North assented. Then would he see the baby? He would, and Trinidad Joe having already seen the baby, and talked of the baby, and felt the baby, and indeed had the baby offered to him in every way during the past night, concluded to give some of his valuable time to logging, and left them together.

Mr. North was obliged to admit that the baby was thriving. He moreover listened with polite interest to the statement that the baby’s eyes were hazel, like his own; that it had five teeth; that she was, for a girl of that probable age, a robust child; and yet Mr. North lingered. Finally, with his hand on the door-lock, he turned to Bessy and said,–

“May I ask you an odd question, Miss Robinson?”

“Go on.”

“Why did you think I was–‘looney’?”

The frank Miss Robinson bent her head over the baby.

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because you WERE looney.”

“Oh!”

“But–“

“Yes–“

“You’ll get over it.”

And under the shallow pretext of getting the baby’s food, she retired to the kitchen, where Mr. North had the supreme satisfaction of seeing her, as he passed the window, sitting on a chair with her apron over her head, shaking with laughter.