“Let’s draw straws for them,” suggested Eleanor sensibly.
Madge shook her head. “No; Captain Jules is to give them to you and to leave me out. Remember, some stranger gave me a handsome pearl when I graduated. I have never had it mounted.” Madge slipped her arm confidingly through the old sea captain’s and gazed into his face with her most earnest expression. “Captain Jules is going to do something else for me; he is going down to the bottom of the bay again in his diving suit, and he is going to take me with him.”
“What a ridiculous idea!” protested Eleanor. “Just as though Captain Jules would think of doing any such thing.”
Lillian laughed unbelievingly, but Phil’s face was serious. “It would be awfully jolly, wouldn’t it? There wouldn’t be any danger if Captain Jules should take you. Do please take Madge down with you, and then take me,” she insisted coaxingly.
Captain Jules shook his head, but the little captain observed that he did not look half so shocked at the idea as he had the first time she proposed it. This was encouraging.
Phil took hold of one of the captain’s hands, and Madge the other.
“Please, please, please!” they pleaded in chorus.
“Miss Jenny Ann wouldn’t let you,” objected Captain Jules faintly.
“But if we were to get her permission,” argued Madge triumphantly, “then you would take us down to the bottom of the bay. I just knew you would, you are so splendid! I shall send to New York to see if we can rent a diving suit.”
“Never mind about that, I’ll see about the suit,” promised Captain Jules. “But it’s all nonsense, and I have never said that I would take you. I wish I weren’t a sailor. There is an old saying that a sailor can never refuse anything to a woman.”