'I shall ask my friend Fairbanks to recommend a man to me. He, of all the shipowners that I am acquainted with, is certain to know of a good man.' 'Will he belong to the Royal Navy?' 'No.' 'Then, he will not be a gentleman?' Vanderholt looked at her intently. His face relaxed. He combed down his beard, and said: 'He will be a sailor; and if he is a sailor, he will be a man. Combine these two things, and you produce an illustration of human existence beyond the achievement of the most illustrious lineage and the most ancient college.' Miss Vanderholt was used to her father's views, and continued her breakfast with a distant, listening air, which promised no further expression of opinion upon this proposed voyage to the Equator. A stranger listening at that table to Vanderholt would have guessed that he was a man of hot temper, a Dutchman at root in his views and prejudices, not a man, perhaps, of many friends, spite of his wealth. He fixed his little eyes upon his daughter, and, after gazing at her for some time, with a look of anxiety, he said: 'You know, Vi, I should not care to go without you.' 'No, father; nor should I wish to be left alone at home.' 'You will be happy in the old _Mowbray_. We will lay in a stock of good things. We will make a fine holiday jaunt of it. Perhaps I shall be able to show you some of the wonders of the deep. We will teach our crew to sing litanies to break the spell of that demon the waterspout. We will hook on to a whale, and thunder through it with foam to the figure-head, with the velocity of the meteoric storm. We shall be at liberty to shift our course as often as we please, and settle some marine problem for good and all; not the sea-serpent--no. Who would defraud the newspapers of that joke? But I am strongly of opinion that there is a distinct difference between the dugong and the mermaid. The old idiots of the fifteenth century no doubt confounded them; and the mermaid, shocked by the hideous misrepresentation--for think of comparing some golden-haired angel of an English girl with a New Zealand native woman, frightful with the hues of her sky, and horrible with devices of the needle!--I say the disgusted mermaid may have sunk into the ooze, resolved never again to give man a sight of her face. Best of all, Vi, the voyage will do me good, will do you good, and delightfully shorten the time of your waiting for George.' 'It is the only feeling I have in the matter,' answered the young lady. And now, having breakfasted, they arose and quitted the table. Miss Violet Vanderholt, being acquainted with her father's character, and knowing that he rarely changed his mind, went to her room, where in peace she occupied a full hour in writing a long letter to George.