'Suppose I call you "Willie." How'll that do ?' "'Do as well as anything, I guess,' he says.

Didn't make no odds to him.
If I'd have called him 'Maud,' he'd have been satisfied.
"He waited in Annex Number Two, which was skippered by Cap'n Jonadab.
And, for a poet, he done pretty well, so the Cap'n said.
"'But say, Barzilla,' asks Jonadab, 'does that Willie thing know the Robinsons ?' "'Guess not,' I says.

But, thinkin' of the way he'd acted when the girl come to the door: 'Why ?' "'Oh, nothin' much.

Only when he come in with the doughnuts the fust mornin' at breakfast, I thought Grace sort of jumped and looked funny.
Anyhow, she didn't eat nothin' after that.

P'r'aps that was on account of her bein' out sailin' the day afore, though.' "I said I cal'lated that was it, but all the same I was interested.
And when, a day or so later, I see Grace and Willie talkin' together earnest, out back of the kitchen, I was more so.