“We have a mail now once a week. It will go day after to-morrow.”
At this period of the conversation Mrs. Rhines came into the room, when the captain, rushing at her, half smothered her with kisses.
“Why, what is the matter, Benjamin?” she exclaimed, noticing his flushed face, and the traces of tears on it.
“Matter, Molly!” bursting out afresh; “the matter is, we’ve got another boy. You know, wife, how much you have heard me tell about Mr. Brown, the mate of the first square-rigged vessel I went to sea in, that did everything, and more too, for me?”
“Indeed, Benjamin, I guess I have.”
“This is his boy, lying here on this lounge!—his only son, named for him.”
“How glad I am, Benjamin!—glad on your account, and on my own, for the sake of his mother.”
“Don’t you think, wife, when I took his father by the hand, to bid him good by, as I was about to step aboard the James Welch as first officer (through and only through his means), I said, with a full heart, ‘Mr. Brown, how can I ever repay you?’ His reply was, ‘Ben, do by other young men you may fall in with, and who are starting in the world with nobody to help them, as I have by you.’ And now a kind Providence has put it in my power to save the life of his son, so help me God, if ever a debt was paid, principal, interest, and compound interest, this shall be. Kiss him, wife.”
Mrs. Rhines kissed the wasted cheek of the young man, and assured him that she was, equally with her husband, interested in his welfare, and rejoiced to receive him as a member of their household.
“Now, Arthur,” said the captain, “you are our boy. You are just as much at home in this house as we are ourselves, and the more we can do for you the better we shall like it. John, here is your brother.”