"I should like to see him. I wonder if he has changed as much as you?"
"I think not," and Cary laughed. "He was twenty-four then, and sort of settled into manhood, while I was a rather green stripling."
"You are losing some of the 'sea tan,' as Madam Royall calls it. I am glad of it. I like you best fair."
"Captain Hawthorne is a very handsome man. I ought to feel flattered to be mistaken for him."
"Is he?" returned Doris simply.
"Don't you remember him?"
"I remember that he asked me for a rose and I gave it to him. It was the last one on the bush. I was so glad to get the letter I couldn't think of anything else."
So Cary brought him over to tea one afternoon. Doris noted then that he was extremely good-looking and very entertaining. Besides, he had a fine tenor voice and they sang songs together.
Uncle Winthrop was troubled at first. Captain Hawthorne's enthusiasm for his profession was so ardent that Mr. Adams was alarmed lest it might turn Cary's thoughts seaward again. But he found presently that Cary's enlisting had been that of a patriotic, high-spirited boy, and that he had no real desire for the life.
What a summer it was! Betty was over often, Eudora was enchanted with the Adams house, and there was a bevy of girls who brought their sewing and spent the afternoon on the stoop. Sometimes Uncle Win came out and read to them. There were several new English poets. A Lord Byron was writing the cantos of a beautiful and stirring poem entitled "Childe Harold" that abounded in fine descriptions. There were "The Lady ol the Lake" and "Marmion," and there was a queer Scotchy poet by the name of Burns, who had a dry wit—and few could master the tongue. A whole harvest of delight was coming over from England.