"Oh, bother!" said Skipper Worse; "now that you are grown up you cannot stay with that old bundle of tracts."
Observing, however, a certain expression on the countenances of his men, he remembered himself, and added, "Ah, you scamp, it is for the girls' sake that you wish to go to Madame Torvestad's. Mind what you are about; remember that I command that ship too."
This was his joke, for Madame Torvestad rented a portion of the back of his house.
When Skipper Worse reached the market quay he met with a sad disappointment. Captain Randulf was away in the Baltic with a cargo of herrings.
CHAPTER II
"Sarah, are you going to the meeting this afternoon?" said Madame Torvestad to her eldest daughter.
"Yes, mother."
"Captain Worse has returned; I shall step across and welcome him home. The poor man is probably still in his sins. Only think, Sarah, if it should be granted to one of us to recover this wanderer from the fold!"
Madame Torvestad looked hard at her daughter as she said this, but Sarah, who stood at the kitchen dresser washing up the dinner plates, did not raise her eyes, which were dark and large, with long eyelashes, and heavy black eyebrows.