bent?"

Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
setting it up.

"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."

"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."

This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.

"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
urge for action.

The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
uncomfortable again.

"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"

Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.

"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
not--not in the least--"

"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.

The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"

Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.

"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
gratification to me--"

"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."

"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"

"Are you?"

"No."

"You aren't?"

"Indeed, no!"

"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
affected Peter.

"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."

"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.

"Yes."

"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let