Jeanne couldn't remember when there hadn't been a heavy, red-headed baby to move from place to place on the old wharf, as she picked flowers, watched pollywogs turn into frogs, or talked to Old Captain. She didn't mind carrying babies, but her father disliked having her do it.
"Don't carry that child, Jeanne," he would say. "It isn't good for your back. Make him walk--he's big enough. If he can't walk, teach him to crawl. The good God knows that he cannot hurt his clothes."
Old Captain and Léon Duval were great friends. At first they had been rivals in business, the Captain with a fish-shop in one end of his freight car, Duval with a fish-shop on the wharf. Before long, however, they went into partnership. A good thing for Duval, who was a poor business man, and not so bad a thing for the Captain.
"What are you captain _of_?" asked Jeannette, one day, when her old friend was busy repairing a net.
"Well," returned Old Captain, with a twinkle in his fine blue eye, "some folks takes to makin' music, some folks takes to makin' money, some folks takes to makin' trouble; but I just naturally takes to boats. I allus had _some_ kind of a boat. Bein' as how it was _my_ boat, of course I was Captain, wasn't I? So that's how."
"Just one," replied Old Captain, who loved the sound of Jeannette's soft, earnest little voice. "One were enough. Still, I'm not complainin'. If I'd been real pleased with that one, maybe I'd have tried another. I was spared that."
"Supposing a beautiful lady with blue eyes and golden hair should come walking down the dock and ask you to marry her," queried Jeanne. "What then?"
"I hope I'd have sense enough to jump in the lake," chuckled Old Captain.
"Oh _then_," cried Jeanne, seriously, "I do hope she won't come. I was only thinking how glad you'd be to have her boil potatoes for you so they'd be hot when you got home."
"Most like she'd eat them all herself. An' she _might_ make things hotter than I'd like."
Old Captain's eyes were so blue that strangers looked at them a second time to make certain that they were not two bits of summer sky set in Captain Blossom's good, red face. Once his hair had been bright yellow. The fringe that was left was now mostly white. He was a large man; nearly twice as large, Jeanne thought, as her father. He was _good_, too. Of course, not twice as good as her good father, because she wouldn't admit that anybody _could_ be better than her beloved "Daddy."