Deficient saints Author:Marshall Saunders Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. TO HIM THE WORLD WAS GAY. Captain White was just getting home. For twenty years he had boarded with his cousin, Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer, and no... more »w neither the near prospect of seeing her again after an absence of some months, nor any dislike for a smart rain that had begun to fall, made him quicken his footsteps as he sauntered deliberately along the concrete sidewalks of the little town. He was a short, dark man, with a slender body, a pair of waggish, twinkling, black eyes, a sleek, dark head, and an ever present smell of fish about his garments. By fish he breathed and moved and had his being, and from the instant that the profitable herring was drawn from its native element, Captain White hung over it, superintending every detail of its curing, preparation, and shipping, for home and foreign markets. Being a retired sea-captain and present fish merchant, his duties were supposed to end with the placing of a cargo of fish on board a vessel, but attimes his affection for his old employment would break forth so strongly that, without a word of warning to Mrs. Prymmer, he would precipitate himself upon a departing schooner, and the town of Rossi- gnol would know him not for a month or two. It was after one of these hasty departures that he was now returning. .He strolled along the lower streets of the town, his fun-loving eyes rolling inquiringly at every one he met, his hands in the pockets of his short nautical jacket, his elbows swaying gently like two pectoral fins propelling him through the air, until he arrived below the old stone mansion, when he drew his hands from his pockets, ran briskly up the three short flights of steps, and rang the bell. " How de do, Mary," he said, briefly, to the maid when she opened the door. Upon ordinary occasions...« less