"And as for Captain Whidden," my father added, "you'll find he cuts a very different figure aboard ship from that he shows in our drawing-room." Then a smile twinkled through his severity, and he laid his hand firmly on my shoulder. "Son, you have my permission ungrudgingly given. There was a time--well, your grandfather didn't see things as I did." "But some day," I cried, "I'll have a counting-house of my own-- some day--" My father laughed kindly, and I, taken aback, blushed at my own eagerness. "Anyway," I persisted, "Roger Hamlin is to go as supercargo." "Roger--as supercargo?" exclaimed a low voice. I turned and saw that my sister stood in the door. "Where--when is he going?" "To Canton on the Island Princess! And so am I," I cried. "Oh!" she said. And she stood there, silent and a little pale. "You'll not see much of Roger," my father remarked to me, still smiling. He had a way of enjoying a quiet joke at my expense, to him the more pleasing because I never was quite sure just wherein the humor lay. "But I'm going," I cried. "I'm going--I'm going--I'm going!" "At the end of the voyage," said my father, "we'll find out whether you still wish to follow the sea. After all, I'll go with you this evening, when supper is done, to see Joseph Whidden." The lamps were lighted when we left the house, and long beams from the windows fell on the walk and on the road. We went down the street side by side, my father absently swinging his cane, I wondering if it were not beneath the dignity of a young man about to go to sea that his parent should accompany him on such an errand. Just as we reached the corner, a man who had come up the street a little distance behind us turned in at our own front gate, and my father, seeing me look back when the gate slammed, smiled and said, "I'll venture a guess, Bennie-my-lad, that some one named Roger is calling at our house this evening." Afterwards--long, long afterwards--I remembered the incident. When my father let the knocker fall against Captain Whidden's great front door, my heart, it seemed to me, echoed the sound and then danced away at a lively pace. A servant, whom I watched coming from somewhere behind the stairs, admitted us to the quiet hall; then another door opened silently, a brighter light shone out upon us, and a big, grave man appeared. He welcomed us with a few thoughtful words and, by a motion of his hand, sent us before him into the room where he had been sitting. "And so," said Captain Whidden, when we had explained our errand, "I am to have this young man aboard my ship." "If you will, sir," I cried eagerly, yet anxiously, too, for he did not seem nearly so well pleased as I had expected. "Yes, Ben, you may come with us to Canton; but as your father says, you must fill your own boots and stand on your own two feet. And will you, friend Lathrop,"--he turned to my father,--"hazard a venture on the voyage?"