don't I go? And leave Bos'n and--"

"Emily would be all right and perfectly safe. Georgianna thinks the
world of her. And, Captain Whittaker, I don't like to hear these people
talk of you as they do. I don't like to read such things in the paper,
that you were only bragging in order to be popular, and meant to shirk
when the time came for action. I know they're not true. I KNOW it!"

Captain Cy was gratified, and his gratification showed in his voice.

"Thank you, Phoebe," he said. "I am much obliged to you. But, you see,
I don't take any interest in such things any more. When I realize that
pretty soon I've got to give up that little girl for good I can't bear
to be away from her a minute hardly. I don't like to leave her here
alone with Georgianna and--"

"I will keep an eye on her. You trust me, don't you?"

"Trust YOU? By the big dipper, you're about the only one I CAN trust
these days. I don't know how I'd have pulled through this if you hadn't
helped. You're diff'rent from Ase and Bailey and their kind--not meanin'
anything against them, either. But you're broad-minded and cool-headed
and--and--Do you know, if I'd had a woman like you to advise me all
these years and keep me from goin' off the course, I might have been
somebody by now."

"I think you're somebody as it is."

"Don't talk that way. I own up I like to hear you, but I'm 'fraid it
ain't true. You say I amount to somethin'. Well, what? I come back home
here, with some money in my pocket, thinkin' that was about all was
necessary to make me a good deal of a feller. The old Cy Whittaker
place, I said to myself, was goin' to be a real Cy Whittaker place
again. And I'd be a real Whittaker, a man who should stand for
somethin', as my dad and granddad did afore me. The town should respect
me, and I'd do things to help it along. And what's it all come to? Why,
every young one on the street is told to be good for fear he'll grow up
like me. Ain't that so? Course it's so! I'm--"

"You SHALL not speak so! Do you imagine that you're not respected by
everyone whose respect counts for anything? Yes, and by others, too.
Don't you suppose Mr. Atkins respects you, down in his heart--if he has
one? Doesn't your housekeeper, who sees you every day, respect and like
you? And little Emily--doesn't she love you more than she does all the
rest of us together?"

"Well, I guess Bos'n does care for the old man some, that's a fact. She
says she likes you next best, thou