“Your business is done, then?”
“It is.”
“And mine, too,” said the American; and each looked at the other, to see who first would divulge his secret.
“I have made arrangements for the guardianship of his son, whom, by the way, I never suspected to be the boy we picked up at sea,” said M’Kinlay, thus endeavouring, by a half-confidence, to obtain the whole of the American’s.
“He’ll not want such guardianship, I promise you, when he lives a few years with me.”
“With you! What do you mean?”
“Just what I say, stranger; that he’s coming aboard the Squash, bound now for the Isthmus; and, I repeat it, five years with Hairy Dodge will turn him out a long sight cuter than if he passed his ‘prenticeship even with yourself.”
“It is a strange notion of Mr. Luttrel’s—a very strange notion.”
The American raised himself up in his seat, and looked as if he were about to resent the speech, but he repressed the temptation, and merely said, “We’re going to have lighter weather than we came over in, and a fine bright night besides.”
“I hope so, with all my heart,” said the other; and now each sat and sipped his wine in silence.