“Belay there, Mary,” he said in his deep, kindly voice. “Thee is making the lass unhappy. And there’s no more use crying over a shorn head than over spilled milk, as I see it.” He looked at the red bob shrewdly. “Never having been a lass, I can’t say how they’re supposed to feel,” he added, a slow smile showing above the neatly trimmed gray beard, “but I guess that crop of red curls ought to be a sight easier to carry about than full sail. Hey?” Erica flashed him a grateful smile. “Yes, oh, it _is_! _Ever_ so much lighter and easier, Captain Bartlet!” “Kind o’ pretty, too,” he said, gallantly. “An’ grows prettier the longer I look at it. Seems to me I used to know thee as a baby, or not much more’n one. Isn’t thee a sister of my new cabin boy, missy?” “No, I’m his cousin,” Erica said, approving of this big, bluff, friendly Quaker captain more and more. She was so thankful he was like this, for Tommy’s sake. She felt suddenly emboldened to put her muscular, tanned young hand on his arm pleadingly. “He’s a nice boy—Tommy,” she said, breathlessly. “He—he really is. He’ll learn quickly. And—and I’d rather be going to sea, too, than anything in this world.” “Ho!” said the captain, with a great shout of laughter. “So that’s why thee cut off the pigtails, missy?” He shook a huge forefinger at her playfully. “Some day thee’ll be adopting boy’s clothes, as well as a hair-cut, and running off to sea in my ship.” At sea, Captain Bartlet usually fell into the more usual “you” and “your,” but ashore in Nantucket he was always scrupulous about the Friends’ mode of speech. “I’d like to,” Erica laughed back. “Only, if I did run, it would be in my father’s ship. He’s got a clipper, too, in the China trade.” “Not Captain Eric Folger of the _Sea Gull_?” the other demanded in surprise. “Somehow, I’d forgotten to associate him with Nantucket, though I’ve known thy Aunt Charity and Tommy’s mother for years. Last voyage but one, the _Spray_ and the _Sea Gull_ lay side by side in the harbor at Canton, waiting for a fog to lift and let us up to the city.” “I’ve been there, too,” Erica said, impulsively. “Only I don’t remember it. I was born at sea, two days before we put in at Canton. My mother died there, and a great friend of father’s—a Chinese merchant named Sun Li—sent his little son’s nurse on board to take care of me on the way home. Ever since then, every voyage father makes to China he brings me home a present from my Chinese godfather. That’s what he calls himself. Aunt Charity won’t let me wear the things yet, because she says they’re too gorgeous. But some of the jade has his seal on it—maybe you’d know him from it—like this.” With her finger nail she traced an intricate pattern of characters in the smooth dirt of a flower pot on the porch railing, looking up eagerly at the captain when it was done. He bent over it, smiling at her enthusiasm, but when he lifted his head his expression was faintly astonished and puzzled.