Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his forehead, and bowed clumsily.

Sailors have a way of using their forelock as a sort of handle to bow with.
The old tar had probably never been in so handsome an apartment in all his days, and nothing could induce him to take the inviting mahogany chair which the Captain wheeled out from the corner.
The abashed mariner stood up against the wall, twirling his tarpaulin in his two hands and looking extremely silly.

He made a poor show in a gentleman's drawing-room, but what a fellow he had been in his day, when the gale blew great guns and the topsails wanted reefing! I thought of him with the Mexican squadron off Vera Cruz, where, 'The rushing battle-bolt sung from the three-decker out of the foam,' and he didn't seem awkward or ignoble to me, for all his shyness.
As Sailor Ben declined to sit down, the Captain did not resume his seat; so we three stood in a constrained manner until my grandfather went to the door and called to Kitty to bring in a decanter of Madeira and two glasses.
"My grandson, here, has talked so much about you," said the Captain, pleasantly, "that you seem quite like an old acquaintance to me." "Thankee, sir, thankee," returned Sailor Ben, looking as guilty as if he had been detected in picking a pocket.
"And I'm very glad to see you, Mr .-- Mr.--" "Sailor Ben," suggested that worthy.
"Mr.Sailor Ben," added the Captain, smiling.

"Tom, open the door, there's Kitty with the glasses." I opened the door, and Kitty entered the room bringing the things on a waiter, which she was about to set on the table, when suddenly she uttered a loud shriek; the decanter and glasses fell with a crash to the floor, and Kitty, as white as a sheet, was seen flying through the hall.
"It's his wraith! It's his wraith!"' we heard Kitty shrieking in the kitchen.
My grandfather and I turned with amazement to Sailor Ben.

His eyes were standing out of his head like a lobster's.
"It's my own little Irish lass!" shouted the sailor, and he darted into the hall after her.
Even then we scarcely caught the meaning of his words, but when we saw Sailor Ben and Kitty sobbing on each other's shoulder in the kitchen, we understood it all.
"I begs your honor's parden, sir," said Sailor Ben, lifting his tear-stained face above Kitty's tumbled hair; "I begs your honor's parden for kicking up a rumpus in the house, but it's my own little Irish lass as I lost so long ago!" "Heaven preserve us!" cried the Captain, blowing his nose violently--a transparent ruse to hide his emotion.
Miss Abigail was in an upper chamber, sweeping; but on hearing the unusual racket below, she scented an accident and came ambling downstairs with a bottle of the infallible hot-drops in her hand.
Nothing but the firmness of my grandfather prevented her from giving Sailor Ben a table-spoonful on the spot.