ged into the boat.

Seeing the damage he had wrought in their catch, the fishermen were
for knocking their captive straightway on the nose. But as he lay
there, looking up with innocent eyes of wonder and appeal through the
meshes, something in his baby helplessness softened the captain's
heart.

"Hold hard, Jim," he ordered, staying a big sailor's hand. "Blamed if
the little varmint ain't got eyes most as soft as my Libby's. I reckon
he'll make a right purty pet fer the kid, an' kind of keep her from
frettin' after her canary what died last Sunday."

"He don't much resemble a canary, Ephraim," laughed Jim, dropping the
belaying-pin.

"I reckon he'll fill the bill fine, all the same," said the captain.

So the Pup was carried prisoner to Eastport.

CHAPTER II

As it happened, Miss Libby was a child of decided views. One of the
most decided of her views proved to be that a seal pup, with very
little voice and that little by no means melodious, was no substitute
for a canary. She refused to look at the Pup at all, until her father,
much disappointed, assured her that she should have a canary also
without further delay. And even then, though she could not remain
quite indifferent to the Pup's soft eyes and confiding friendliness,
she never developed any real enthusiasm for him. She would minister
amiably to his wants, and laugh at his antics, and praise his good
temper, and stroke his sleek, round head, but she stuck resolutely to
her first notion, that he was quite too "queer" for her to really
love. She could never approve of his having flippers instead of fore
paws, and of his lying down all the time even when he walked. As for
his hind feet, which stuck out always straight behind him and close
together, like a sort of double-barrelled tail, she was quite sure
they had been fixed that way by mistake, and she could not, in spite
of all her father's explanations as to the advantages, for a seal, of
that arrangement, ever bring herself to accept them as normal.

Miss Libby's mother proved even less cordial. Her notions of natural
history being of the most primitive, at first view she had jumped to
the conclusion that the Pup was a species of fish; and in this opinion
nothing could ever shake her.

"Well, I never!" she had exclaimed. "If that ain't just like you, Eph
Barnes. As if it wa'n't enough to have to eat fish, an' talk fish, an'
smell fish, year in an' year out, but you must go an' bring a live
f