He's all I've got in the world, and you know as well as I do that I
run to tell him everything that happens to me as soon as it happens.
Will you sit down?"

"No," said the captain, "I can speak better standing. Maria Port, I have
found out that you have been trying to make people believe that I am
engaged to marry you."

The smile did not leave Maria's face. "Well, ain't you?" said she.

A look of blank amazement appeared on the face of the captain, but it
was quickly succeeded by the blackness of rage. He was about to swear,
but restrained himself.

"Engaged to you?" he shouted, forgetting entirely the people in the
street; "I'd rather be engaged to a fin-back shark!"

The smile now left her face. "Oh, thank you very much," she said. "And
this is what you meant by your years of devotion! I held out for a long
time, knowing the difference in our ages and the habits of sailors, and
now--just when I make up my mind to give in, to think of my father and
not of myself, and to sacrifice my feelin's so that he might always
have one of his old friends near him, now that he's got too feeble to go
out by himself, and at his age you know as well as I do he ought to have
somebody near him besides me, for who can tell what may happen, or how
sudden--you come and tell me you'd rather marry a fish. I suppose you've
got somebody else in your mind, but that don't make no difference to me.
I've got no fish to offer you, but I have myself that you've wanted so
long, and which now you've got."

The angry captain opened his mouth to speak; he was about to ejaculate
Woman! but his sense of propriety prevented this. He would not apply
such an epithet to any one in the house of a friend. Wretch rose to his
lips, but he would not use even that word; and he contented himself
with: "You! You know just as well as you know you are standing there
that I never had the least idea of marrying you. You know, too, that you
have tried to make people think I had, people here in town and people
out at my house, where you came over and over again pretending to want
to talk about your father's health, when it did not need any more
talking about than yours does. You know you have made trouble in my
family; that you so disgusted my niece that she would not stop at my
house, which had been the same thing as her home; you sickened my
friends; and made my very servants ashamed of me; and all this because
you want to marry a man who now despises you. I wou