He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before
in the full flush of business. He behaved to his daughter as if she
had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to
bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not
care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast
every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as though he
were cursing.

Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably impressed by his tenant, that
once he told Miss Bessie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear."

She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who
expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting,
and, as she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her
needles.

"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide for," Captain
Hagberd went on a little vacantly. "Girls, of course, don't require so
much--h'm-h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."

"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.

Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled. With
his maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Neptune,
he resembled a deposed sea-god who had exchanged the trident for the
spade.

"And he must look upon you as already provided for, in a manner. That's
the best of it with the girls. The husbands . . ." He winked. Miss