She opened her eyes, which for a
moment she had closed, and, gazing into his face, she put her
arms around his neck. Then Captain Cephas came away, without
thinking of the little girl and the pleasure she would have in
discovering her Christmas stocking.
When he had been left alone, Captain Eli sat down near the
kitchen stove, close to the very kettle which he had filled with
water to heat for the benefit of the man he had helped bring in
from the sea, and, with his elbows on his knees and his fingers
in his hair, he darkly pondered.
"If I'd only slept with my hard-o'-hearin' ear up," he said
to himself, "I'd never have heard it."
In a few moments his better nature condemned this thought.
"That's next to murder," he muttered, "fer he couldn't have
kept himself from fallin' asleep out there in the cold, and when
the tide riz held have been blowed out to sea with this wind. If
I hadn't heard him, Captain Cephas never would, fer he wasn't
primed up to wake, as I was."
But, notwithstanding his better nature, Captain Eli was again
saying to himself, when his friend returned, "If I'd only slept
with my other ear up!"
Like the honest, straightforward mariner he was, Captain
Cephas made an exact report of the facts. "They was huggin' when
I left them," he said, "and I expect they went indoors pretty
soon, fer it was too cold outside. It's an all-fired shame she
happened to be in your house, cap'n, that's all I've got to
say about it.
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