"You don't mean, sir, that you're going to resign!" said I, confounded.
"No, I don't. Saving your objections, boy, I was elected captain, and it don't do away with my responsibility that I choose to let discipline go to the winds. If mischief comes I shall be to blame, because I might have stopped it but didn't."
I was silent. This should have been the time for me to tell what I had discovered that afternoon; of the graveyard and the two strange women. But shame tied my tongue. I saw that this noble gentleman, in imparting his thoughts to me, was really condescending to ask my pardon; and the injustice of it was so monstrous that I felt a delicacy in letting him know the extent of my unworthiness. I temporized, and promised myself a better occasion.
"But are you quite sure, sir, that yours was not the wisest plan, after all?"
"The question is not worth considering," he answered. "My policy— you would hardly call it a plan, for it wholly depended on circumstances—no longer exists. The ladies, you see, have forced my hand."
I forbore to tell him that if the ladies had forced his hand his accepting full responsibility was simply quixotic.
"She's a wonderful woman," said I, by way of filling up the pause.
"And so womanly!" assented Captain Branscome, to my entire surprise.
"Indeed, sir," I stammered. "Well, I have heard people say—Mr. Rogers for one—that Miss Belcher ought to have been born a man."
"Miss Belcher? Why, heavens alive, boy, I was referring to Miss Plinlimmon!"