Captain January | Page 3

might have been so, had not the stairs been so steep, and the little legs so short) was the figure of a child: a little girl about ten years old, with a face of almost startling beauty. Her hair floated like a cloud of pale gold about her shoulders; her eyes were blue, not light and keen, like the old man's, but of that soft, deep, shadowy blue that poets love to call violet. Wonderful eyes, shaded by long, curved lashes of deepest black, which fell on the soft, rose-and-ivory tinted cheek, as the child carefully picked her way down, holding up her long dress from her little feet. It was the dress which so astonished Captain January. Instead of the pink calico frock and blue checked pinafore, to which his eyes were accustomed, the little figure was clad in a robe of dark green velvet with a long train, which spread out on the staircase behind her, very much like the train of a peacock. The body, made for a grown woman, hung back loosely from her shoulders, but she had tied a scarf of gold tissue under her arms and round her waist, while from the long hanging sleeves her arms shone round and white as sculptured ivory. A strange sight, this, for a lighthouse tower on the coast of Maine! but so fair a one, that the old mariner could not take his eyes from it.
"Might be Juliet!" he muttered to himself. "Juliet, when she was a little un. 'Her beauty hangs upon the cheek o' Night,'--only it ain't, so to say, exactly night,--'like a rich jewel in a nigger's ear.' No! that ain't right. 'Nigger' ain't right, 'Ethiop's ear, 'that's it! Though I should judge they were much the same thing, and they more frekently wear 'em in their noses, them as I've seen in their own country."
As he thus soliloquised, the little maiden reached the bottom of the stairs in safety, and dropping the folds of the velvet about her, made a quaint little courtesy, and said, "Here I am, Daddy Captain! how do you like me, please?"
"Star Bright," replied Captain January, gazing fixedly at her, as he slowly drew his pipe from his pocket and lighted it. "I like you amazin'. _A_-mazin' I like you, my dear! but it is what you might call surprisin', to leave a little maid in a blue pinafore, and to come back and find a princess in gold and velvet. Yes, Pigeon Pie, you might call it surprisin', and yet not be stretchin' a p'int."
"Am I really like a princess?" said the child, clapping her hands, and laughing with pleasure. "Have you ever seen a princess, Daddy Captain, and did she look like me?"
"I seed--I _saw_--one, once," replied the Captain, gravely, puffing at his pipe. "In Africky it was, when I was fust mate to an Indiaman. And she wa'n't like you, Peach Blossom, no more than Hyperion to a Satyr, and that kind o' thing. She had on a short petticut, comin' half-way down to her knees, and a necklace, and a ring through her nose. And--"
"Where were her other clothes?" asked the child.
"Wal--maybe she kem off in a hurry and forgot 'em!" said the Captain, charitably. "Anyhow, not speakin' her language, I didn't ask her. And she was as black as the ace of spades, and shinin' all over with butter."
"Oh, that kind of princess!" said Star, loftily. "I didn't mean that kind, Daddy. I meant the kind who live in fretted palaces, with music in th' enamelled stones, you know, and wore clothes like these every day."
"Wal, Honey, I never saw one of that kind, till now!" said the Captain, meekly. "And I'm sorry I hain't--I mean I _ain't_--got no fretted palace for my princess to live in. This is a poor place for golden lasses and velvet trains."
"It _isn't_!" cried the child, her face flashing into sudden anger, and stamping her foot. "You sha'n't call it a poor place, Daddy! It's wicked of you. And I wouldn't live in a palace if there were fifty of them all set in a row. So there now!" She folded her arms and looked defiantly at the old man, who returned her gaze placidly, and continued to puff at his pipe, until he was seized in a penitent embrace, hugged, and kissed, and scolded, and wept over, all at once.
The brief tempest over, the child seated herself comfortably on his knee, and said, "Now, Daddy, I want a story."
"Story before supper?" asked the Captain, meekly, looking at the saucepan, which was fairly lifting its lid in its eagerness to be attended to. A fresh access of remorseful hugging followed.
"You poor darling!" said Star; "I forgot all about supper. And it's stewed kidneys, too! But oh! my dress!"