happy enough he also looked like a widower--why, I can't say. It may
have been owing to his general unstowed, unfurled, unswabbed
appearance. He had not yet fastened on his wooden leg. He never did,
nowadays, until he had eaten his breakfast and played a tune or two on
his fiddle. His eyes were paler than his daughter's, and not nearly so
bright, and he had a way of staring at a thing for minutes at a time as
if he did not see it--and usually he didn't. Altogether, he was a very
impractical person. He must have made a feeble sailor--a regular fool as
a look-out--and the wonder is that he lost only one leg during his
deep-sea career. He looked at the skipper with that calm, far-away
shimmer in his eyes, combing his thin whiskers with his fingers. He did
not speak. His wooden leg was leaning up against his chair.

"Good morning to ye, Pat Kavanagh," said the skipper.

The poet blinked his eyes, thereby altering their expression from a
shimmer to a gray, wise gleam.

"So it bes yerself, Skipper Denny," he said. "Set down. Set down. Sure,
b'y, I didn't expect to see ye so spry to-day, an' was just studyin' out
a few verses concernin' death an' pride an' ructions that would keep yer
memory green."

"Whist, father!" exclaimed the girl.

"I bain't dead, Pat, so ye kin set to on some new varses," said the
skipper. "If ye t'ought them poor fools ye heard yowlin' last night was
to be the death o' me, then ye was on the wrong tack. But I bes here now
to ax yer opinion concernin' them same fools, Pat. Yesterday they raised
a mutiny agin me, all along o' a poor girl as I saved from the wrack,