loving language, was it not to win one's heart?

Old Perrault had never dissembled his regard for the sailor. A pity he
viewed life so carelessly, the brave-hearted Baldwin. So excellent in
many respects, if he had but a little ambition for himself! If he but
hearkened a little for the world's opinion. But such a man! Sometimes
old Perrault wished that his motherless Claire would disregard all his
wordly homilies, fall in love with the rugged Baldwin, and marry him.

Baldwin himself maintained no such exalted hopes. A fine husband he'd
make after his riotous years! But he had a friend, recently detailed to
the yard, and warmly recommended by the boson's mate, this friend Harty,
chief wireless operator, soon came to be the most regular of all the
Saturday night attendants at old Perrault's store. It was on Saturday
nights that the unmarried foreman on the breakwater job came up to see
old Perrault. If you stood well with the old fellow, like as not he
would ask you to the house of a Sunday afternoon, and then you could sit
around and rest your eyes on the lovely Claire while she played the
piano.

One might think that old Perrault, who so casually picked his company,
was a careless sort of parent; but not so, as witness his questioning of
Baldwin, when it began to dawn on him that this wireless operator was
becoming a distinguished member of the Sunday afternoon parties; and the
boson's mate, who revered old Perrault, but who also thought a lot of
his friend Harty, spoke judiciously.

"He's all right," he replied to old Perrault, "all right. Yes, I know he
used to drink an' was generally wild once; but he's over that. Oh, sure,
all over that now."