But as time went on I kept puttin' off and puttin' off, and at last I realized I couldn't do it; I'd come to think too much of her.
"Fellers," he went on, slowly, "I--I hardly know how to tell you what that little girl's come to be to me.

When I first struck Bayport, after forty years away from it, all I thought of was makin' over the old place and livin' in it.

I cal'lated it would be a sort of Paradise, and HOW I was goin' to live or whether or not I'd be lonesome with everyone of my folks dead and gone, never crossed my mind.

But the longer I lived there alone the less like Paradise it got to be; I realized more and more that it ain't furniture and fixin's that make a home; it's them you love that's in it.

And just as I'd about reached the conclusion that 'twas a failure, the whole business, why, then, Bos'n--Emily, that is--dropped in, and inside of a week I knew I'd got what was missin' in my life.
"I never married and children never meant much to me till I got her.
She's the best little--little.