"Don't you think I had better call you uncle or something instead of just Larry?" said Courage after she had stood silently at his side for ever so many minutes.
"Why?" asked Larry, amused at the suggestion.
"Oh, because it doesn't seem right for a child like me to call you by your first name. I should have thought that they would have taught me different."
"Oh, bless your heart, Courage! nobody taught you what to call me..You just took up 'Larry' of yourself in the cutest sort of a way, and before you could say half-a-dozen words to your name, and now to tack an uncle on to it after all these years would sound mighty queer, and I shouldn't like it."
"Well, then, we'll just let it be Larry always," and indeed Courage herself was more than willing to have things remain as they were. As for Sylvia, she soon decided that her one form of address for Larry should be "my Cap'n," for was he not in very truth _her_ captain by grace of his choice of her from among all the other little colored orphans whom he might have taken? Indeed, Sylvia fairly seemed to revel in the two-lettered personal pronoun, for if there is a Saxon word for which the average institution child has comparatively little use it is that word _my_. Where children are cared for by the hundreds, _my_ and _me_ and _mine_ and all that savors of the individual are almost perforce lost sight of. No wonder, then, when Sylvia said "my Cap'n," it was in a tone implying a most happy sense of ownership, and as though it stood for the "my father" and "my mother" and all the other "mys" of more fortunate little children.
At last Sylvia's supper was ready, and before announcing the fact, she stood a moment, arms akimbo, taking a critical survey of her labors. Then, convinced that nothing had been forgotten, she cleared the cabin stairs at a bound, and beckoning to Larry and Courage, called out excitedly, "Come 'long dis minute, please, 'fore it all gets cold."
Larry, who had many misgivings as to the result of his protegee's first efforts, was greatly surprised on reaching the cabin to find a most tempting little table spread out before them, but it was hard to tell whether surprise or indignation gained the mastery In the eyes of astonished Courage. That the table looked most attractive no one could for a moment deny, but what most largely contributed thereto was a glorious bunch of scarlet geraniums, to compass which Sylvia had literally stripped a double row of plants standing in the cabin window of every flower. These plants had been Mary Duff's special pride for several seasons, and she herself had carefully superintended their transportation in a wheelbarrow to the lighter the day before.