There was evidently something wrong, so I thought, but as more could be learned by keeping quiet than in any other way, I didn’t allow my curiosity to worry me. In a few minutes the clerks left the room, and I finished the drink I had ordered. Then I paid my score from a bag of rather light pocket ballast, and strolled down to the dock where the _Arrow_ lay. Larry O’Toole, the big, red-headed, freckle-faced second mate, was hard at work on her main-deck getting a mixed cargo into her. He had been second mate with me once before, and he gave me a hearty greeting as I climbed aboard. I reported to Captain Crojack, and then got into my working togs to start the men loading at the fore hatch. Every one aboard the ship knew me, and even the old rigger, who was setting up the backstays, had sailed with my father, Captain Gore, when he was the crack skipper of the Yankee deep-water fleet, and who had gone on his long cruise when I was yet a boy. I felt my position to be rather uncomfortable at first, but a sailor soon learns to adapt himself to all circumstances, and I reasoned that it would be better to appear as a good mate than as a poor skipper. Then I took hold in earnest, and it wasn’t long before we had the clipper settling in a way that bid fair to have her on her load-line in a pair of days. When we knocked off work for the night, I went aft and met Captain Crojack, who handed me a note from Mr. Ropesend. I opened it and found that it was an invitation to join a small party of the old merchant’s friends at his house that evening. I showed it to Captain Crojack and explained that I was not a man for a social party of either men or women, and that in my present humour I would prove rather poor company. After talking over the matter with him, however, he intimated so strongly that I must go that I finally went to a barber’s and then rigged myself out as well as possible in a hired suit of clothes. I had lost all my shore togs, except one ragged suit, in the wreck of the _Southern Cross_. After finishing my rig, I made my way in no pleasant frame of mind to Mr. Ropesend’s residence. On arriving there I looked at my watch and found that it was exactly the hour he requested me to be there, so I walked boldly up the broad stone steps, rang the bell and entered. There was not a soul there besides Mr. Ropesend and his sister, Mrs. Matthews, but this lady was dressed as though she expected company. You will understand what I mean by that, for a sailor can hardly describe the gearings belonging to trim females, in spite of the fact that he is always talking about them and drawing comparisons between them and clippers under sky-sails. The large hall of the house was decorated with great quantities of rubber-plants, palms, and ferns. The door which led into the passage to the conservatory was open, and the drawing-room was filled with the warm, damp odour of flowers and moist earth.