Dickory Charter, who matured in a fashion which made everybody forget that Kate Bonnet was eleven months his senior, entered into business with Mr. Delaplaine, and Jamaica became the home of this happy family, whose welfare was founded, as on a rock, upon the disappearance of the wicked.
Here, then, was a brave girl who had loved her father with a love which was more than that of a daughter, which was the love of a mother, of a wife; who had loved him in prosperity and in times of sorrow and of shame; who had rejoiced like an angel whenever he turned his footsteps into the right way, and who had mourned like an angel whenever he went wrong. She had longed to throw her arms around her father's neck, to hold him to her, and thus keep off the hangman's noose. Her courage and affection never waned until those arms were rudely thrust aside and their devoted owner dastardly repulsed.
True to herself and to him, she loved her father so long as there was anything parental in him which she might love; and, true to herself, when he had left her nothing she might love, she bowed her head and suffered him, as he passed out of his life, to pass out of her own.
[CHAPTER XL]
CAPTAIN ICHABOD PUTS THE CASE
In the river at Bridgetown lay the good brig King and Queen, just arrived from Jamaica. On her deck was an impatient young gentleman, leaning over the rail and watching the approach of a boat, with two men rowing and a passenger in the stern.
This impatient young man was Dickory Charter, that morning arrived at Bridgetown and not yet having been on shore. He came for the purpose of settling some business affairs, partly on account of Miss Kate Bonnet and partly for his mother.