But all this I had expected. I had never dreamed he would immediately come into my plans. He said he raised objections for my sake, not for his own. To be sure, he would get into very serious trouble if it was discovered he had helped me to smuggle myself into the ship. He was willing to take all risks to do me a vast service and to make me happy; but wasn’t it his duty to keep me, his cousin, a handsome, well-nurtured, fine young woman, out of the black and filthy fore-peak of a merchantman and preserve me from what might follow discovery? I let him talk and feigned to sympathise with his generous, sympathetic dread of the consequence of my scheme. Yet some time before we sat down to the tea and toast I rang for, I had worked him by entreaty, sometimes by tears, by eager impassioned representations of possibilities of my plan into a partially acquiescent mood. He kissed me, held my hand, called me his sister, declared he would help me if he dared; I must give him time to think; he’d go on board his ship and take a look round and talk over the matter with me again. We arranged a meeting for the day after next, and he left me after solemnly promising to keep my plan and our conversation secret. I sat alone all that evening thinking of this long talk. One objection of his perhaps sunk a little with me when I was by myself musing; he had figured me arriving at Hobart Town where I was without a friend, and he had imagined Tom being sent up country to a part where the only house for miles might be the person’s to whom the Government handed him. But I resolutely said to myself: I must take my chance; this may not happen; in any case I shall be in the country where my sweetheart is. Partly to please myself, and partly to convince my cousin, I went to a large outfitter’s shop in the Minories next morning, and representing that I wished to make a present of a suit of clothes to a young sailor friend I asked the shopman to show me a number of sizes in pilot coats and cloth trousers. I said that I was about the height and breadth of the young man for whom I wished to buy the clothes. The shopman measured me round my chest, took the length of my arms and of my figure and then made up a parcel of the clothing that came nearest to the measurements. A lad walked behind me to my house with this bundle, and sat in the hall whilst I took the clothes to my bedroom and secretly put them on. The first suit I tried fitted me as though cut for my shape; though the material was stout, it buttoned loosely over me and gave me the chest of a plump lad. The trousers had the flowing cut of the tarpaulins of those days; the swell of the cloth at the extremities made my feet look ridiculously small, and I saw that I should require stout boots if my feet were not to betray me.