their father had been: Edward would have relished Gerrit as a
brother-in-law; good would have come to them all from such a connection.

If he had been in America at the time no such error would have been
permitted. With his counsel Nettie would have caught Ammidon beyond any
escape. He wondered if the girl had actually cared for the shipmaster or
if the affair had been nothing more than a sop to her wounded pride and
isolation. In a way beyond his present understanding this seemed to be
considerably important. If she had loved him no one could predict what
her attitude might be in any future development of their contact; but if
her pride only had been involved, injured, she might readily be an
instrument for his own obscure purposes.

The office where Barzil Dunsack conducted the limited affairs of his
West India trading was a small one-room building back of the dwelling.
There was a high desk at which a clerk stood, or balanced on a
long-legged stool, a more formal secretary against the length of the
wall, with a careful model of a full ship, the spars and standing
rigging slack and the whole gray with dust, a built-in cupboard
opposite, a dilapidated chair or so and a ten-plate iron stove for wood.
A window looked out across the grass to the harbor and another opened
blankly against a board fence.

There Edward Dunsack made a column of entries in a script fine and
regular but occasionally showing an uncontrollably tremulous line. He
was conscious of this tendency, growing through the past year; and he
surveyed his writing with a feeling of angry dismay. Try as he might,
with a frowning concentration, to pen the words and numerals firmly,
presently his attention would slip, his hand waver ever so slightly, and
a sudden stricken appearance of old age fasten on the characters.... By