How much the captain's good looks had to do with the "Heather Bell's"
popularity as a pleasure-boat it would not do to ask; but there was
reason enough for her being liked aside from that. Sweet and fresh in
and out, with white deck, the chairs and settees all painted green, and
a gay streamer flying,--white, with three green bars,--and "Donald
Mackintosh, Captain," in green letters, and below these a spray of pink
heather, she looked more like a craft for festive sailing than for
cruising about from one farm-landing to another, picking up odds and
ends of farm produce,--eggs and butter, and oats and wool,--with now and
then a passenger. Donald liked this slow cruising and the market-work
best; but the picnic parties were profitable, and he took them whenever
he could. He kept apart, however, from the merry-makers as much as
possible, and was always glad at night when he had landed his noisy
cargo safe back at the Charlottetown piers.
This disposition on his part to hold himself aloof was greatly
irritating to the Charlottetown girls, and to no one of them so much as
to pretty Katie McCloud, who, because she was his second cousin and had
known him all her life, felt, and not without reason, that he ought to
pay her something in the shape or semblance of attention when she was on
board his boat, even if she were a member of a large and gay party, most
of whom were strangers to him.
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