“Your clothes, Brown-Eyes! Why have you brought clothes?”
“I’m going with Neal, of course.”
Neal sat upright suddenly and stared at her with a new expression in his eyes. He was the prey of sheer astonishment, then of a rapture which set his heart beating tumultuously.
“You are going with Neal! Nonsense, Brown-Eyes. How can you?”
“I’ve money to pay my passage,” she said, “and if I hadn’t I’d go just the same. I shall climb up into the brig, and I won’t be turned out of her.”
“You can’t,” said Maurice.
“Oh, but I can, and I will. Do you think you and father are the only two in the family that have wills of your own. You’ll take me, Neal, won’t you? We’ll be married as soon as ever we get to America. I’m like the girl in the song—
“‘I’ll dye my petticoat, I’ll dye it red,
And through the world I’ll beg my bread,’
but I won’t leave you now, Neal.”
She began to sing merrily, exultingly—
“Though father and brother and a’ should go mad,
Just whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad.”