rd knocks keep that devilish fellow in condition!"

"But I'd planned--we didn't want to have too long an--engagement--"

"I'll guarantee you, little daughter, you will not have to wait longer
than six months. Please wait--for my sake." And Cappy rose, made his way
round the breakfast table and placed his old arms about the light and
joy of his existence. "So, so, now!" he soothed. "Don't you cry, honey,
until you hear what the old man has to say. Why, haven't I always given
my little daughter everything she wanted? You wanted that big sailor,
Florry; I saw he wanted you; and he looked awful good to me. I knew he
was man, every inch of him; he was our kind of people and he knew ships
and loved them, and so I wanted him for you. What if he was a big hunk
of a sailor with hardly enough money saved up to buy you half a dozen
party dresses? None of the Ricks tribe was ever born or bred in the
purple--and I have money enough for all practical purposes. So I went
after him for you, Florry, and you're going to get him; so don't cry
about it."

"Life is so filled with disappointments," Florry sobbed, notwithstanding
this was the first she had ever known.

Cappy smiled a still small smile as he bent over her.

"Fiddlesticks!" he replied. "Only the day before yesterday Matt told me
he didn't want to work for me; that he didn't want a relative handing
him any favors; and that he wasn't marrying you to ease himself into a
soft job for life. He said he wanted to make the fight himself. And do
you know, Florry, if he had been my own boy I couldn't have been prouder
of him than when he told me that! When old What-you-may-call-him in
Shakespeare's play said: 'Let me have men about me that are fat,' it
showed how blamed little Shakespeare knew about men. He should have
said: 'Let me have men about me who are long and tough, and fairly thick
in the middle; let me have scrappy boys about me with backbone!'

"Well, in a way, Florry, I was disappointed, and perhaps, in the heat of
the moment, I showed it, as I have a habit of doing; but after Matt
had left the office, and I got to thinking it over, away down low I was
proud of him. Consequently when he reversed his decision yesterday I
knew why, for I lived twenty-five years with your mother. But a woman's
love is selfish sometimes, and I knew that Matt had surrendered, not to
me, but to you; though he came across like a sport, he didn't want to,
for you'd roweled him and roped him with