“I was so unfortunate as to call when she was out shopping, and as Mrs. Church, the housekeeper, told me that she was so busy preparing for the approaching wedding that she was engaged all the time, I have hesitated to call again,” replied the sailor, as with a somewhat deeper shade of red in his sun burned face he seated himself between the twins. “Lucy will not thank Mrs. Church for that speech if it is to deprive her of the pleasure of welcoming her old playmate and cousin back to Boston and home. You must come and dine with us tomorrow,” said Lucy’s grandfather. “I am much obliged for your kind invitation, sir, but if you will only grant the request I am about to make of the firm, my next visit to my cousin will be to say goodby, as well as to receive a welcome home from a voyage.” “Why, what do you mean, lad!” exclaimed both of the brothers simultaneously. Concealment or deception was probably the most difficult of all things for this frank man with the free spirit of the sea fresh in his soul, so that while he answered the color surged up stronger and stronger in his face until the white brow, saved from the sun by his hat, was as red as his close shaven cheeks. “Well, sir, this is what I mean. I learned yesterday that the storm we encountered crossing the Atlantic coming home had strained my ship so badly that it will be two months before she is out of the shipwright’s hands.” “What of that, Jack,” broke in the darker J. Dunlap. “Take a rest at home. I know your mother will be delighted, and speaking from a financial standpoint, as you know, it makes not the least difference.” “I was going to add, sir, that this morning I learned that Captain Chadwick of your ship ‘Adams,’ now loaded and ready to sail for Australia, was down with pneumonia and could not take the ship out, and that there was some difficulty in securing a master that filled the requirements of your house. I therefore applied to Mr. Burton for the command of the ‘Adams,’ but he absolutely refused to consider the application saying that as I had been away for almost two years, that it would be positively brutal to even permit me to go to sea again so soon, and that the ‘Adams’ might stay loaded and tied to the dock ten years rather than I should leave home so speedily.” “Burton is exactly right, I endorse every word he has said. You can’t have the ‘Adams’!” said James Dunlap with emphasis. “What would Martha Dunlap, your mother, and our dear cousin’s widow, think if we robbed her of her only son so soon after his return from a long absence from home?” “My mother knows, sir, that my stay at home will be very brief. She expects me to ask to go to sea again almost immediately. I told her all about it when I first met her upon my return,” and as he spoke the shipmaster’s gaze was never raised from the nautical cap that he held in his hand.