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 The little fellow sat up in her lap and laughed as he patted her breast joyously with his thin hand. “Cully could do it,” he shouted in high glee; “Cully can do anything.” Babcock, apparently, made no more difference to her than if he had been an extra chair.

As she moved about her rooms afterward, calling to her men from the open door, consulting with Jennie, her arms about her neck, or stopping at intervals to croon over her child, she seemed to him to lose all identity with the woman on the dock. The spirit that enveloped her belonged rather to that of some royal dame of heroic times, than to that of a working woman of to-day. The room somehow became her castle, the rough stablemen her knights.

On his return to his work she walked back with him part of the way. Babcock, still bewildered, and still consumed with curiosity to learn something of her past, led the talk to her life along the docks, expressing his great surprise at discovering her so capable and willing to do a man's work, asking who had taught her, and whether her husband in his time had been equally efficient and strong.