smiling.

"As you know," she said, "there's many men who follow the sea with
homes in this street, but Williams is so proud and strong-willed. He
says he doesn't want to hear about them. What do they know about the
sea? You know his way. What do they know about the sea? That's the
way he talks, doesn't he? But surely the sea is the same for us all.
He won't have it, though. Williams is so vain and determined."

The captain knocked. There was no doubt about that knock. The door
surrendered to him. His is a peremptory summons. The old master
mariner brought his bulk with dignity into the room, and his wife,
reaching up to that superior height, too slight for the task,
ministered to the overcoat of the big figure which was making, all
unconsciously, disdainful noises in its throat. It would have been
worse than useless for me to interfere. The pair would have repelled
me. This was a domestic rite. Once in his struggle with his coat the
dominant figure glanced down at the earnestness of his little mate,
paused for a moment, and the stern face relaxed.

With his attention concentrated and severe even in so small an effort
as taking from his broad back a reluctant coat, and the unvarying fixed
intentness of the dark eyes over which the lids, loose with age, had
partly folded, giving him the piercing look of a bird of prey; and the
swarthiness of his face, massive, hairless, and acutely ridged, with
its crown of tousled white hair, his was a figure which made it easy to
believe the tales one had heard of him when he was the master of the
_Oberon_, and drove his ship home with the new season's tea, leaving,
it is said, a trail of light spars all the way from Tientsin to the
Channel.

The coat was off. His wife had it over her arm, and was regarding with
concern the big petulant face above her. She said to him: "Number Ten
is let at last. They're a young couple who have got it. He's a
sailor."

The old man sat down at a corner of the table, stooped, and in one
handful abruptly hauled the cat off the rug, laying its unresisting
body across his knees, and rubbing its ribs with a hand that half
covered it. He did not appear to have heard what he had been told. He
did not look at her, but talked gravely to the fire. "I met Dennison
today," he said, as if speaking aloud to himself, in surprise at
meeting Dennison. "Years since I saw him," he continued, turning to
me. "Where was it now, where was it? Mu