There were many other interruptions, happily not all so painful, before the new garments were finished; but, for many weeks, Jeanne's sewing traveled with her from end to end of the old dock; while she kept a watchful eye on her restless small charges.
"Father," asked Jeanne, one evening, when the pink dress was finished and Michael had received what the Captain called "a real pair of store pants," "aren't Michael and Sammy and Annie and Patsy your children, too?"
"Then why don't you take as much pains with them as you do with me? You never scold Michael for eating with his knife or for not being clean or for saying bad words. You didn't like it at all the day I said those bad words to Mollie's mother. _You_ remember. The words I heard those men say when their boat ran into the dock. You said that ladies _never_ said bad ones. Of course you couldn't make a lady out of Michael; but there's Annie. Why _is_ it, Daddy?"
"Well," returned Mr. Duval, carefully shaved and very neat and tidy in his shabby clothes, "they are Mollie Shannon's children. You are the daughter of Elizabeth Huntington. Your full name is Jeannette Huntington Duval. I want you to live up to that name."
"Do you mean," asked Jeanne, who was perched on the old trunk, "that Mollie's children _have_ to be like Mollie?"
"Something like that," admitted Mr. Duval.
"That's a pity," said Jeanne. "I _like_ those children. They're _sweet_ when they're clean. And Michael's almost always good to the others."
"Perhaps it wouldn't be right," said her father, "to make Mollie's children better than she is. They might despise her and be unkind to her. It is best, I fear, to leave things as they are."
"Don't you _love_ those other children?" queried Jeanne.
"You are asking a great many questions," returned her father. "It is my turn now. Suppose you tell me through what states the Mississippi River flows?"
Mr. Duval admitted to himself, however, that he did _not_ love those other children as he loved Jeanne. He tried hard, in fact, not to hate them. They were so dreadfully like Mollie; so dirty, so untidy, so common. Dazed from his long illness, half crazed by the death of his beautiful young wife, he had married Mollie Shannon without at all realizing what he was doing. He hadn't wanted a wife. All he thought of was a caretaker for wailing Jeannette, who seemed, to her inexperienced father, a terrifying responsibility.
