And just at this moment Moses is sauntering home from Captain Kittridge's in company with Sally, for Mara has sent him to bring her to tea with them. Moses is in high spirits; everything has succeeded to his wishes; and as the two walk along the high, bold, rocky shore, his eye glances out to the open ocean, where the sun is setting, and the fresh wind blowing, and the white sails flying, and already fancies himself a sea-king, commanding his own place, and going from land to land. "There hasn't been a more beautiful ship built here these twenty years," he says, in triumph. "Oho, Mr. Conceit," said Sally, "that's only because it's yours now--your geese are all swans. I wish you could have seen the Typhoon, that Ben Drummond sailed in--a real handsome fellow he was. What a pity there aren't more like him!" "I don't enter on the merits of Ben Drummond's beauty," said Moses; "but I don't believe the Typhoon was one whit superior to our ship. Besides, Miss Sally, I thought you were going to take it under your especial patronage, and let me honor it with your name." "How absurd you always will be talking about that--why don't you call it after Mara?" "After Mara?" said Moses. "I don't want to--it wouldn't be appropriate--one wants a different kind of girl to name a ship after--something bold and bright and dashing!" "Thank you, sir, but I prefer not to have my bold and dashing qualities immortalized in this way," said Sally; "besides, sir, how do I know that you wouldn't run me on a rock the very first thing? When I give my name to a ship, it must have an experienced commander," she added, maliciously, for she knew that Moses was specially vulnerable on this point. "As you please," said Moses, with heightened color. "Allow me to remark that he who shall ever undertake to command the 'Sally Kittridge' will have need of all his experience--and then, perhaps, not be able to know the ways of the craft." "See him now," said Sally, with a malicious laugh; "we are getting wrathy, are we?" "Not I," said Moses; "it would cost altogether too much exertion to get angry at every teasing thing you choose to say, Miss Sally. By and by I shall be gone, and then won't your conscience trouble you?" "My conscience is all easy, so far as you are concerned, sir; your self-esteem is too deep-rooted to suffer much from my poor little nips--they produce no more impression than a cat-bird pecking at the cones of that spruce-tree yonder. Now don't you put your hand where your heart is supposed to be--there's nobody at home there, you know. There's Mara coming to meet us;" and Sally bounded forward to meet Mara with all those demonstrations of extreme delight which young girls are fond of showering on each other.