absorbing troubled life he must have often turned to me and tried to
make himself my friend. But children pass hard judgments. And if my
father was friendly at times it did no good. For he was a man--big and
strong--and I was a small boy craving his love.

Why couldn't he really love me? Why couldn't he ask me how I felt or
pull my ear and say "Hello, Puss?" He was always saying these things to
Sue, and caring about her very hard and trying to understand her,
although she was nothing but a girl, two years younger and smaller than
I and far less interesting. And yet with her he was kind and tender,
curious and smiling, he watched her with wholly different eyes. My
father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years
old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his
unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle
and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and
once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My
father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it
stung. And this wasn't fair--I had hoped for a cuddle. Besides, he was
always praising Sue when I knew she didn't deserve it. He called her
brave. Once when he took us duck shooting together a squall came up and
he rowed hard, and Sue sat with her eyes on his, smiling and quite
unafraid. At home that night I heard him tell my mother how wonderfully
brave she had been, and of how I, on the other hand, had gripped the
boat and turned white with fear, while little Sue just sat and smiled.

"We'll see how brave she is," I thought, and the next day I hit her in
Sam's best style, fairly "knocked her nut off," in fact, with one quick
blow. "There," I said to myself while she screamed. "I guess that shows
how brave you are. I didn't scream when Sam hit me."

He said she was quicker than I at her lessons. And this rankled the
deeper because it was true. But I would never admit it.

"Of course she's quick, when he's always helping her. Why doesn't he
ever come and help me?" I would burst into tears of vexation. My father
was unfair!

More than that, it was he and his dock and his warehouse, in the years
that followed my thrills with Sam, that stripped all these thrills away.
A great ship with her spreading, booming white sails might move up the
river from heathen lands as wonderful and strange as you please. But the
moment she reached my father's dock she