The captain, who was a fresh jolly fellow of some forty years old, was no longer the same man after he had passed a couple of weeks there. He grew moody, peevish, and barely civil; and my father often lamented the impatience with which he awaited the completion of the ship, in order to be off again. One day Evers came to our house at an unusual hour, and desired to see my father, who at that time of day was not usually in his counting-room, but with his family. The captain was shown in, and after we children had been sent away, at his desire, he said: "I have something to say to you which it is best your good lady should hear, too. I have just come from the dock-yard, where I have been looking at the ship. It will be two months before she will be off the stocks. Then it will be too late to go to sea, even if you should have her rigged upon the stocks. I can't get off till spring; and I can't hold out so long as that. If I only had my fellows of the Fortune here"--(this was the name of the vessel he had last commanded)--"if I only had them with me in Neumühlen, it would be all right: but I grow down in the mouth there, it is so quiet. I'd rather be on a sand-island, alone with the seals and the sea-mews, under the open heavens, than among all those nicknacks of my little house, which must be used, and which I can't use. And so, I thought I'd ask you--" "If you couldn't be off!" interrupted my father. "Surely, Evers, you are not thinking of that in earnest, are you?" "No, I am not thinking of that. I have agreed to take command of the new ship; and I am in the habit of keeping my word. But I thought I would ask--" here he stopped, twirled his hat about in his hand, turned to my mother, and continued--"what you think about it--whether I hadn't better get married?" It seemed as though a great load was taken from his mind, when he had got out these words. He had his house, a pretty little property, and was a good-looking, noble fellow, and bid fair to make an excellent husband; and so my mother advised him earnestly to carry his design into execution; asking him whether he had yet found a girl whom he could wish to marry. "Will you give me Marie?" asked he. Marie was the daughter of a woman who had attended me and my sisters, and who had long been dead. My parents had brought Marie up, and she served my mother as chambermaid; but was looked upon as one of the family, and was very dear to us all. She was about four-and-twenty years old, and might be considered a very pretty girl. My mother said, that she thought a marriage between Marie and the captain would be altogether proper, notwithstanding he was considerably the older; and Evers begged her to be his spokeswoman with Marie.