“H-m! yes, I suppose so,” answered Filhiol, frowning a little. “Though heredity’s peculiar. We don’t always know just what it is, or how it acts. Still, if a well-marked trait comes out in the offspring, we call it heredity. So he’s got your love of the sea, has he?”
“He surely has. There’s salt in _his_ blood, all right enough!”
“H-m! You don’t notice any—any other traits in him that—remind you of your earlier days?”
“If you mean strength and activity, and the love of hard work, yes. Now see, for example. Any other boy would have come home by train, and lots of ’em would have traveled in the smoker, with a pack of cigarettes and a magazine. Does Hal come home that way? He does not! He writes me he’s going to work his way up on a schooner, out of Boston, for experience. That’s why I’m keeping my glass on the harbor. He told me the name of the schooner. It’s the _Sylvia Fletcher_. The minute she sticks her jib round Truxbury Light, I’ll catch her.”
“_Sylvia Fletcher?_” asked the doctor. “That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Why, just look at those initials, captain. _Sylvia Fletcher_—S.F.”
The captain turned puzzled eyes on his guest. He passed a hand over his white hair, and pondered a second or two. Then said he:
“That _is_ odd, doctor, but what about it? There must be hundreds of vessels afloat, with those initials.”
“By all means. Of course it can’t mean anything. As you say, S.F. must be common enough initials among ships. So then, Hal’s amphibious already, is he? What’s he going to be? A captain like yourself?”
“I’d like him to be. I don’t hardly think so, though,” Briggs answered, a little distraught. Something had singularly disturbed him. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the withered little man in the chair beside him.
“It’s going to be his own choice, his profession is,” he went on. “He’s got to settle that for himself. But I know this much—anything he undertakes, he’ll make a success of. He’ll carry it out to the last inch. He’s a wonder, Hal is. Ah, a fellow to warm the heart! He’s none of your mollycoddles, in spite of all the high marks and prizes he’s taken. No, no, nothing at all of the molly-coddle.”
The captain’s face lighted up with pride and joy and a profound eagerness.