uld resign
from her situation on the spot.

But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her.
And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed. She spluttered a
little more, then returned to her work. Though she was sullen all day,
she did not offer to reopen the discussion.

"What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise
thought. "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp
suggested. My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all."

But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father. He stood
on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with
Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word.

That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender
heart, the girl was sure. For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel
a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him
stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with
him. And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye.

"Blind's a bat! Poor little critter!" he would murmur. "All the
sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more. Out-o'-doors
ain't nothin' to him now."

Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor
little Jerry. He had promised Abe, he said. He kept that promise
faithfully.

Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem. At first, whenever he
saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled. Then, gradually, an
unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell. He would
peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes
through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the
substitute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest
in the man. But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him.

"I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon.
"They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull
tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's
hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten. Brought
it up on a bottle himself.

"He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock
under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as
lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall
in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed
demon would lay in it, to