e nothin'--a hat or nothin' else--is goin' to float on top
of a person's head. Froth floatin', that's all right, you understand;
but even if you took froth right out of the water and slapped it up onto
anybody's hair 'twouldn't FLOAT up there. If you'd said,

'It SETS up onto her golden curls,
Same as froth sets on top of a wave.'

that would have been all right and true. But there, don't feel bad about
it. It's only a little mistake, same as anybody's liable to make. Nine
persons out of ten wouldn't have noticed it. I'm extry partic'lar, I
presume likely. I'm findin' mistakes like that all the time."

Laban's comment was less critical, perhaps, but more reserved.

"It's pretty good, Al," he said. "Yes--er--yes, sir, it's pretty good.
It ain't all new, there's some of it that's been written before, but I
rather guess that might have been said about Shakespeare's poetry when
he fust commenced. It's pretty good, Al. Yes--yes, yes. It is so."

Albert was inclined to resent the qualified strain in the bookkeeper's
praise. He was tempted to be sarcastic.

"Well," he observed, "of course you've read so much real poetry that you
ought to know."

Laban nodded, slowly. "I've read a good deal," he said quietly. "Readin'
is one of the few things I ain't made a failure of in this life. Um-hm.
One of the few. Yes yes--yes."

He dipped his pen in the inkwell and carefully made an entry in the
ledger. His assistant felt a sudden pang of compunction.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Keeler," he said. "That was pretty fresh of me.
I'm sorry."

Laban looked up in mild surprise. "Sorry?" he repeated. "What for? . . .
Oh, that's all right, Al, that's all right. Lord knows I'm the last one
on earth who'd ought to criticize anybody. All I had in mind in sayin'
what I did was to--well, to kind of keep you from bein' too well
satisfied and not try harder on the next one. It don't pay to be too
well satisfied. . . . Years ago, I can remember, _I_ was pretty well
satisfied--with myself and my work. Sounds like a joke, I know, but
'twas so. . . . Well, I've had a nice long chance to get over it. Um-hm.
Yes--yes. So I have, so I have."

Only Captain Zelotes at first said nothing about the poem. He read it,
his wife saw to that, but his comment even to her was a non-committal
grunt.

"But don't you think it's real sort of pretty, Zelotes?" she asked.

The captain grunted again. "Why, I guess likely 'tis if you say so,
Mother.