“But if you really want the fun of sewing on some of this—do you suppose you could copy this Chinese costume for me—so I can have two? I’d be crazy about this pale-gold color. Feel the silk—it’s so heavy, and yet so soft! Think you—_could_, Milly? I know it would please Sun Li, too.” Milly’s face lighted with professional enthusiasm. She felt of the chosen piece of silk with critical, expert fingers, and then turned to study the jade-green model Erica was wearing. “I know I could,” she said, with great earnestness, “if you’ll lend me those other things to cut the pattern by. And, oh, I’d rather do this than anything you could possibly offer!” she wound up in a great outburst of excitement. “Let’s—let’s start in right now, cutting out,” she pleaded. “Then I won’t have to have your clothes tomorrow, when you’ll want to be wearing them.” Erica’s answer was to slip out of her long green coat with business-like promptness and lay it on the bunk, while Milly, wild with delight, her fingers actually trembling with excitement, unrolled the heavy bolt of silk. When Aunt Callie opened the cabin door to see if they were safely in bed, an hour later, she was almost struck dumb with astonishment to see the two seated side by side on the soft golden carpet Sun Li had had laid in the cabin for his goddaughter, the black and red heads bent absorbedly over yards and yards of golden silk that swirled about them like a bit of leftover sunset from that evening. “My stars!” she gasped, and then burst into a little, understanding chuckle. “We shall probably all be Chinese before the ship touches at Nantucket again, two months from now!” CHAPTER XV Sun Li preferred the open sea to long calls at the various ports outlined on their itinerary, so they spent very little of the time on land, after all. They stopped at Charleston, down in South Carolina, and all went ashore to walk along the beautiful Battery, and later through the picturesque old city—creating not a little comment and excitement with their decidedly exotic procession, and the fact of the big tea clipper putting in at a port where clippers did not usually call. But they did not stay, returning on board within a few hours, and setting sail for Savannah that same afternoon. The latter city, with its wide, tree-lined streets, and flower-filled parks delighted them all; it was here Erica saw her first great trees hung with the long, trailing gray moss. But His Excellency was restless to be back on the _Sea Gull_, and as they had done at their first stop, they sailed again the day of their arrival. From Savannah, Captain Eric set a course for Cuba, and on the second day out from the Georgia coast, abruptly and out of a smiling summer sky, their first bad weather descended upon the voyagers.