You don't mind my callin' you 'Crawford,' do you?" he added, turning to that young gentleman. "I'm old enough to be your father, for one thing, and for another a handle's all right on a jug or a sasspan, but don't seem as if 'twas necessary to take hold of a friend's name by. And I hope we're goin' to be friends, we three."
Crawford said he hoped so, too, and he said it with emphasis.
"Good!" exclaimed the Captain with enthusiasm. "And we'll cement the friendship--the book fellers are always tellin' about cementin' friendships--with this supper of ours, eh? If we only had some of Isaiah's last batch of mincemeat we could sartinly do it with that; it was the nighest thing to cement ever I saw put on a table. I asked him if he filled his pies with a trowel and you ought to have heard him sputter. You remember Isaiah, don't you, Crawford? Tall, spindlin' critter, sails cook for Zoeth and me at the house down home. He ain't pretty, but his heart's in the right place. That's kind of strange, too," he added with a chuckle, "when you consider how nigh his shoulder-blades are to the top of his legs."
Between his stories and jokes he found time to ask his male guest a few questions and these questions, although by no means offensively personal, were to the point. He inquired concerning the young man's home life, about his ambitions and plans for the future, about his friends and intimates at college. Crawford, without being in the least aware that he was being catechized, told a good deal, and Captain Shadrach's appraising regard, which had learned to judge men afloat and ashore, read more than was told. The appraisal was apparently satisfactory for, after the young man had gone and the Captain and Mary were saying good night in the Wyeth parlor, Shadrach said:
"A nice boy, I should say. Yes, sir, a real nice young feller, as young fellers go. I like him fust-rate."
"I'm glad, Uncle Shad," said Mary. "I like him, too."
Shadrach regarded her with a little of the questioning scrutiny he had devoted to Crawford during dinner.
"You do, eh?" he mused. "How much?"
"How much?" repeated Mary, puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean how much do you like him? More'n you do your Uncle Zoeth and me, for instance?"
She looked up into his face. What she saw there brought the color to her own. He might have said more, but she put her finger-tips upon his lips.
"Nonsense!" she said hotly. "What wicked, silly nonsense, Uncle Shad! Don't you ever, ever say such a thing to me again. You KNOW better."
Shadrach smiled and shook his head.
"All right, Mary-'Gusta," he said; "I won't say it again--not till you say it to me fust, at any rate. There, there, dearie! Don't blow me clean out of the water. I was only jokin', the same as Isaiah was tryin' to that night when you came home for your Christmas vacation."
"I don't like that kind of joking. I think it's silly."
"I guess maybe 'tis--for a spell, anyhow. We'll heave the jokes overboard. Yes, I like that Crawford Smith fust-rate. But the funniest thing about him is the way he reminds me of somebody else.
Who that somebody is I can't make out nor remember. Maybe I'll think sometime or other, but anyhow I like him now for his own sake.
I asked him to come down and see us sometime this summer. Wonder if he will."
Mary-'Gusta wondered, too, but she would have wondered more had she known what that coming summer was to mean to her. The morning after the theater party Captain Shadrach called to say good-by to Mrs.
Wyeth. That lady asked some questions and listened with interest and approval to his report concerning Crawford Smith.
