A Sunny Little Lass — Key Ideas to Explore

Glory was so surprised by this last sentence that she snapped her thread off in the wrong place and wasted a whole needleful. Until yesterday, she had never heard her grandfather speak in any but the most contented spirit about his lot in life. Then he had twice lamented that he "didn't know whatever was to become o' two poor creatur's like them," and now, again, this gay morning, he was complaining--almost complaining. Glory didn't feel, in the least, like a "poor creatur'." She felt as "chirpy as a sparrow bird," over in City Hall park; and, if the sun didn't shine in the Lane, she knew it was shining in the street beyond, so what mattered?

Vaguely disturbed, the child laid her hand on his arm and asked, "Be you sick, grandpa?"

He answered promptly and testily, "Sick? No, nor never was in my life. Nothin' but blind an' that's a trifle compared to sickness. What you askin' for? Didn't I eat my breakfast clean up?"

"Ye-es, but--but afterward you--you kicked Bo'sn, an' sayin' that about 'walkin' the street' just a singin'; why, I thought you liked it. I know the folks like to hear you. You do roll out that about the 'briny wave' just grand. I wish you'd sing it to Bo'sn an' me right now, grandpa, dear."

Wholly mollified and ashamed of his own ill-temper, the captain tried the familiar tune but it died in his throat. Music was far beyond him just then, yet he stroked the child's head tenderly, and said, "Some other time, mate, some other time. I'm a little hoarse, maybe, or somethin'."

"Well, then, never mind. Let's talk 'Snug Harbor.' You begin. You tell an' I'll put in what I'm mind to; or I'll say what I guess it's like an' you set me straight if I get crooked. 'Cause you've seen it, grandpa, an' I never have. Not once; not yet. Bime-by---- Oh, shall I begin, shall I, grandpa?"

The sailor sighed fit to shake the whole small tenement and nodded in consent; so, observing nothing of his reluctance to their once favorite subject, Glory launched forth:

"'Sailors' Snug Harbor' is the most beautifulest spot in the whole world! It's all flowery an' grassy an' treesy. It's got fountains an' birds an' orchestry-music forever an' ever. 'Tain't never cloudy there, nor rainy, nor freezy, nor snowy, nor nothin' mean. Eh, grandpa? Am I straight or crooked?"

The captain, roused as from a reverie, replied absently, "It's a beautiful place, mate; I know that. Nobody wants for nothin' there, an' once a man casts anchor there he's in safe haven for the rest of his days. Oh, I ain't denyin' none of its comforts, but I wish the whole concern'd burn to the ground or sink in the bay. I wish the man first thought of it had died before he did."

In his anger, the blind man clasped his knife till its blade cut his hand and Glory cried out in dismay. But he would not have her bathe the wound and resumed his carving in silence. The little girl waited awhile, once more fitting the small patch into the big hole of Posy Jane's jacket; then she went on as if nothing had occurred:

"When we go there to live, me an' you, we'll have a room as big an' nice as this an' you won't have to do a hand's turn for yourself. You an' Bo'sn'll just set round in rockin'-chairs--I've seen 'em in the stores--with welwet cushings on your laps--I mean you two a settin' on the cushings, a dressed up to beat. Maybe, they'll let you order the whole crew, yourself, into white ducks for muster at six bells, or somethin'.

"An'," Glory continued, "there'll be me a wearin' a white frock, all new an' never mended, an' my hair growed long an' lovely, an' me just as purty as I wish I was, an' as everybody has to be that lives to the 'Harbor.' An' bime-by, of a Sunday, maybe, when they can spare the time, Posy Jane an' Billy Buttons, an' Nick, the Parson, 'll come walkin' up to the beautiful gate, an' the captain what keeps it'll write their names in a book an' say, 'Walk right in, ladies an' gentlemens, walk right in. You'll find Captain Simon Beck an' Miss Glorietta Beck'--'cause I'm goin' to put that long tail to my plain 'Glory' when I go to live there, grandpa.