I dropped the stranger a curtsey of those times, and with a quick glance gathered him. Small need to call him captain to know he was a sailor. His weather-darkened face, the fashion of his clothes, the indescribable ocean-rolling ease of his manner of rising and bowing to me, were assurance enough of his calling. I took him to be a man of about thirty. His eyes were a dark blue, and full of good-humour and intelligence; his hair was auburn, curling and plentiful; no feature of him but was admirable--nose, mouth, teeth--all combined in a face of manly beauty. He stood about five feet eleven, and, though there was nothing of the soldier in his erect posture, his figure was without any hint of that rounded back and hanging-armed stoop which come to people who’ve had to pull and haul on a reeling deck for sour pork and creeping bread in their youth. These and like points I did not notice all at once in that first glance; but before half an hour was gone I could have drawn a correct portrait of him from memory, so often, at every maidenly and modest opportunity, were my eyes upon him. He had done business with uncle, and, having lately arrived in the Thames, had called and been asked to stay to supper and meet me. They had been talking about my cousin Will when I entered the room, and, after the introduction, continued the subject, my uncle seeming to be pretty full of it. ‘Oh!’ said I, catching up something that he had let fall. ‘So, then, you have settled upon a ship for Will?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘and a fine ship she is.’ ‘There’s no finer ship than the _Childe Harold_ out of the Thames,’ said Captain Butler. ‘And her captain is a very good sort of a man, we are told,’ said my aunt. ‘I have heard him well spoken of. I don’t know him,’ said Captain Butler. ‘When does Will sail?’ I asked. ‘A fortnight to-day,’ answered my uncle. ‘You remember our compact?’ I said eagerly. My uncle smiled slowly and shook his head. ‘But I say yes!’ I cried, starting up in my impetuous way. ‘Aunt, _you_ know it was settled. Will was my playmate as a child. I love him as a brother, and I claim the right of giving him his outfit.’ ‘She is a sailor’s child,’ said my uncle to Captain Butler.