A fortnight later, and John Chidlaw was the master of a little black sailboat not much bigger than a canoe, and his business was to carry butchers' meat, bread, poultry, and vegetables from the market-town in which he lived to the great hotels situated on the hills above the opposite shore. His boat had, therefore, in his eyes, somewhat the dignity of a merchantman; and as he was entitled to a part of the profits of the trade he carried on, he was at once a proud and a happy man. He had christened his boat "The Rose Rollins," and kept her as neat and trim as she could be. He wore a sailor's jacket, from professional pride, and used all the nautical phrases he could muster. His shoulders got the better of their stoop, and his chest of its hollowness, in a wonderfully short time; and one day, when he was asked about the scar on his hand, he answered that he had been bitten by a whale when he was a young man at sea. It will be perceived that he was gaining confidence, and growing in worldly wisdom. The questioner was a very timid person, but she said she guessed she could trust herself with an old sailor like that, and at once went aboard. She was a milliner, laden with boxes for the ladies in the opposite hotels, and was the first female passenger the master of the Rose had had;--for his legitimate trade was merchandise, and not the transportation of men and women; but occasionally, as his confidence grew, he had taken a passenger or two across the ferry, on his own hook, as he phrased it. "I took such a wiolent fancy to the name o' your wessel," says the milliner, "and that is how I come to take passage with you. Ain't she a nice little thing, though?" "Trim as a gal o' sixteen!" says John. "But had n't you better unlade yourself o' your merchandise, and fix to enjoy the sail some?"--and he began taking the boxes from her lap. "O sir, you 're wery good!" says the milliner, quite blushing. And then she adjusted her skirts, and flirted them about as she adjusted them, and then she untied her bonnet-strings and knotted them up again, for nothing in the world but the pleasure of tying knots in ribbon apparently; but John Chidlaw thought he had never in his life seen such a graceful and enchanting performance. He brought his jacket directly, and offered to spread it over the board on which she was sitting. "Oh, you 're wery good, wery good, I am sure, sir,--but I 'm a-givin' you too much trouble!"--and, saying so, she partly rose and allowed the seat to be cushioned as proposed. The wind caught the bright ribbons, and fluttered them in the man's face as he was thus employed. "Oh!" says the milliner, with a little start; and then she says, "The nasty winds have such a wulgar way of catchin' up a body's things"; and she pulls back the innocent strings and holds them against her bosom by main force.