“Cap'n Lote,” began Keeler, “I'm sorry to bother you, but that last carload of pine was--”
Captain Zelotes waved his hand, brushing the carload of pine out of the conversation.
“Labe,” he said, slowly, “did it seem to you that I was too hard on him?”
Laban did not understand. “Hard on him?” he repeated. “I don't know's I just get--”
“Hard on Al. Did it seem to you as if I was a little too much of the bucko mate to the boy? Did I drive him too hard? Was I unreasonable?”
The answer was prompt. “No, Cap'n Lote,” replied Keeler.
“You mean that? . . . Um-hm. . . . Well, sometimes seems as if I might have been. You see, Labe, when he first come I--Well, I cal'late I was consider'ble prejudiced against him. Account of his father, you understand.”
“It took me a good while to get reconciled to the Portygee streak in him. It chafed me consider'ble to think there was a foreign streak in our family. The Snows have been straight Yankee for a good long while. . . . Fact is, I--I never got really reconciled to it. I kept bein' fearful all the time that that streak, his father's streak, would break out in him. It never did, except of course in his poetry and that sort of foolishness, but I was always scared 'twould, you see. And now--now that this has happened I--I kind of fret for fear that I may have let my notions get ahead of my fair play. You think I did give the boy a square deal, Labe?”
“I'm glad of that. . . . And--and you cal'late he wasn't--wasn't too prejudiced against me? I don't mean along at first, I mean this last year or two.”
Laban hesitated. He wished his answer to be not an overstatement, but the exact truth.
“I think,” he said, with emphasis, “that Al was comin' to understand you better every day he lived, Cap'n. Yes, and to think more and more of you, too. He was gettin' older, for one thing--older, more of a man--yes, yes.”
Captain Zelotes smiled sadly. “He was more boy than man by a good deal yet,” he observed. “Well, Labe, he's gone and I'm just beginnin' to realize how much of life for me has gone along with him. He'd been doin' better here in the office for the last two or three years, seemed to be catchin' on to business better. Didn't you think so, Labe?”
“Sartin. Yes indeed. Fust-rate, fust-rate.”