Her eyes were blue and her hair nut-brown, and her charms of face and figure were enhanced immeasurably by an air of modesty and earnestness that went straight home to your heart, and caused you to adore her at once.

Buzzby doated on her as if she were his only child, and felt a secret pride in being in some indefinable way her protector.

Buzzby philosophized about her, too, after a strange fashion.

"You see," he would say to Fred, "it's not that her figurehead is cut altogether after a parfect pattern--by no means, for I've seen pictur's and statues that wos better--but she carries her head a little down, d'ye see, Master Fred?
and there's where it is; that's the way I gauges the worth o' young women, jist accordin' as they carry their chins up or down.

If their brows come well for'ard, and they seems to be lookin' at the ground they walk on, I knows their brains is firm stuff, and in good workin' order; but when I sees them carryin' their noses high out o' the water, as if they wos afeard o' catchin' sight o' their own feet, and their chins elewated, so that a little boy standin' in front o' them couldn't see their faces nohow, I make pretty sure that t'other end is filled with a sort o' _mush_ that's fit only to think o' dress and dancing." On the present occasion Isobel's eyes were red and swollen, and by no means improved by weeping.