were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.
“I’m right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe; and I hope you’ll be as happy as the first bride was who came here. I can’t wish you no better than that. But your husband doesn’t introduce me jest exactly right. ‘Captain Jim’ is my week-a-day name and you might as well begin as you’re sartain to end up—calling me that. You sartainly are a nice little bride, Mistress Blythe. Looking at you sorter makes me feel that I’ve jest been married myself.”
Amid the laughter that followed Mrs. Doctor Dave urged Captain Jim to stay and have supper with them.
“Thank you kindly. ’Twill be a real treat, Mistress Doctor. I mostly has to eat my meals alone, with the reflection of my ugly old phiz in a looking-glass opposite for company. ’Tisn’t often I have a chance to sit down with two such sweet, purty ladies.”
Captain Jim’s compliments may look very bald on paper, but he paid them with such a gracious, gentle deference of tone and look that the woman upon whom they were bestowed felt that she was being offered a queen’s tribute in a kingly fashion.
Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart. He had a tall, rather ungainly figure, somewhat stooped, yet suggestive of great strength and endurance; a clean-shaven face deeply lined and bronzed; a thick
