But, somehow, when a captain takes his wife with him the whole tone of a ship is raised many degrees. But, over and above all this, Captain Paterson owned the ship, or most of her, for the mate and some others had shares, and this arrangement caused things to pull together better. This honest skipper was a good example of what industry and carefulness in business can accomplish, and love with honour, I may add; for he would have told you that the best thing ever he did was marrying Maggie, and taking her to sea with him. Well, the _Nor'lan' Star_ reached Trondhjem at last; and as the men were not drunkards, but knew how to use without abusing God's gifts, every man settled to work, and with the help of dockmen the unloading and the loading-up again proceeded regularly and peacefully enough, and was all over in a week. Then the orders were to clean ship before the granting of a few days' leave off and on to the watches. In a very short time all signs of the loading-up were obliterated, and from stem to stern the _Nor'lan' Star_ looked as sweet and clean as a new half-crown. Ben and the mate had been very busy up till now, but Mrs Skipper had taken Lotty on shore several times. The town, with its great cathedral, was in its winter garb; but they found the streets regular and wide, and even pretty, the older houses being of wood, plain in architecture, but very quaint. There were many fine shops too, and the people therein were kindly in the extreme. Everything here, especially about the suburbs, was very strange and foreign-like, but with none of the fussiness found in French ports, where it is mostly all palaver and insincerity. All her life at present was what, in the case of busy men who have been laid aside for a time by illness, doctors call 'an enforced holiday.' But it was a very delightful and restful one. She was free for a time from the drudgery of show-work, of having to sing and act to crowds of gaping rustics and others; free from the bullying and ill-treatment of her father, Biffins Lee. She only wished that Wallace had been with her now. As for the others--well, they would like her better when she came back from a watery grave, or, more plainly, when the sea gave up the one they all believed dead and gone. But Wallace, what fun he would have had with little baby Norlans, and how he would have rolled him up and down the deck, but gone to sleep afterwards with the sealkin in his arms, like the good dog he was! A tub, both she and Mrs Skipper admitted, was an awkward and somewhat unsightly cot for the sealkin, so they had a look round the toy-shops, and at one they found an assortment of dolls as big as the baby-children of Anak must have been.