The cat's
gone crazy!"

The girl was in a gale of laughter. "Of course he hasn't," she said.
"He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face. You
can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon."

Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation. "You
got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe. I must have surprised
the critter. And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt."

"Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise.

"There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the
cage hanging in the sunlit window. "What's Abe call him?"

"Jerry."

"And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary. Wouldn't
trust nobody else, he said, to feed and water him." He rose from the
table, leaving his breakfast. "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?"

He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires
of the cage. Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped
along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger,
sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings.

"There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief. "_He_ takes to me all
right."

"That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway. She had
removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching
seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be
completely hidden when she had the hat on her head. "That don't show
nothin'," she repeated grimly.

Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why
don't it, I want to know?"

"'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind."

"Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone.

"It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again.

"I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced. "Didn't want
to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird. Jerry's
used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the
slats of the cage for him to perch on. He just thinks you're Cap'n
Abe."

She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes. Cap'n
Amazon came slowly back to his chair. "Blind!" he repeated. "I want
to know! Both his deadlights out. Too bad! Too bad!"

He did not seem to care for any more breakfast.

Footsteps in the store soon brought the substitute shopkeeper to his
feet again.

"I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the
seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled. "I'd ought to h