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"They ain't ever anythin' as hard on the young uns as on the old uns," asserted Captain Phippeny, "because well, because they're young, I guess. That's Chivy's yacht that came in just at sundown, ain't it?" "Yare. They say she's seen dirty weather since she was here last." "Has? Well, you can't stay in harbor allers, and git your livin' at the same time.
Several times she went to the door, meaning to go out, and up the street to look for her daughter, but each time something withheld her. Instead, with that determination that distinguished her, she busied herself with trifling duties. It was quite nine o'clock when she saw Captain Phippeny coming up the street. She stood still and watched him approach.
Captain Phippeny was one of those sailors whom the change of scene, the wide knowledge of men and of things, the hardships and dangers of a sea life, broaden and render tolerant and somewhat wise. Pember had been brutalized by these same things.
She looked up and saw that Captain Phippeny had followed her in and was standing before her, turning his hat in his brown, tattooed hands. "Mis' Pember," he said, "I thought, mebbe, now Mellony was married, you'd be thinkin' of matrimony yourself agen." As Mrs. Pember gazed at him dumbly it seemed as if she must all at once have become another person.
"I never heard as you weren't a good husband to Mis' Phippeny," she said calmly, "and I dono as anybody'll make any objection if I marry you, Captain Phippeny." Memoir of Mary Twining THE other day I spent several hours in looking over a lot of dusty volumes which had fallen to me in the way of inheritance.
And she thinks she can keep that girl of hers out of the same kind of discipline that she had to take, that's the truth of it." "Cur'ous, ain't it?" ruminated Captain Smart. "A woman's bound to take it one way or 'nother; there seems to be more sorts of belayin' pins to knock 'em over with than they, any on 'em, kinder cal'late on at first." "So there be," assented Captain Phippeny.
"You told her where they'd gone, I reckon," he remarked, with a slight chuckle, as he too leaned up against the fence and looked out over the harbor. "Yes, I did," replied Captain Phippeny. "I didn't have no call to tell her a lie." "Kinder hard on the young uns," observed the new-comer.
She saw Captain Pember reel into the house, she shuddered at his blasphemy, she felt the sting of the first blow he had given her, she cowered as he roughly shook Mellony's little frame by her childish arm. "She'd better be dead!" she murmured. "I wish she was dead." Captain Phippeny pulled himself together. "No, she hadn't, no, you don't, Mis' Pember," he declared stoutly.
"Yes, I did. Leastways I didn't," he responded. "I come to tell you about about Mellony." "What about Mellony, Captain Phippeny?" she demanded, pale, but uncompromising. "What have you got to tell me about Mellony Pember?" she reiterated as he paused.
The yellow shirt and the leathern jacket were more succinctly audacious than ever, but doubt and irresolution in every turn of his blue eyes and line of his weather-beaten face had taken the place of the tolerant kindliness. "It's a warm mornin', Mis' Pember," he observed, more disconcerted than ever by her unsmiling alertness. "You came a good ways to tell me that, Captain Phippeny."
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