'Tisn't often I have a chance to sit down with two such sweet, purty ladies." Captain Jim's compliments may look very bald on paper, but he paid them with such a gracious, gentle deference of tone and look that the woman upon whom they were bestowed felt that she was being offered a queen's tribute in a kingly fashion.
Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart.

He had a tall, rather ungainly figure, somewhat stooped, yet suggestive of great strength and endurance; a clean-shaven face deeply lined and bronzed; a thick mane of iron-gray hair falling quite to his shoulders, and a pair of remarkably blue, deep-set eyes, which sometimes twinkled and sometimes dreamed, and sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in them, as of one seeking something precious and lost.

Anne was to learn one day what it was for which Captain Jim looked.
It could not be denied that Captain Jim was a homely man.

His spare jaws, rugged mouth, and square brow were not fashioned on the lines of beauty; and he had passed through many hardships and sorrows which had marked his body as well as his soul; but though at first sight Anne thought him plain she never thought anything more about it--the spirit shining through that rugged tenement beautified it so wholly.
They gathered gaily around the supper table.

The hearth fire banished the chill of the September evening, but the window of the dining room was open and sea breezes entered at their own sweet will.