“Well, you are needed!”
“All right. But, after that, I ought to be getting back to Salem.”
“You’ll get back to nowhere!” ejaculated Briggs. “They can spare you at the home a few days. You’re needed here on the bridge while this typhoon is blowing. Here you are and here you stay till the barometer begins to rise!”
“All right, captain, as you wish,” he conceded, his will overborne by the captain’s stronger one. “But what’s the program?”
“The program is to pay off everything and straighten that boy out and make him walk the chalk-line. Between the four of us—you and I and Laura and Ezra—if we can’t do it, we’re not much good, are we?”
“Laura? Who is this Laura, anyhow? What kind of a girl is she?”
“The very best,” answered Briggs proudly. “Hal wouldn’t go with any other kind. She’s the daughter of Nathaniel Maynard, owner of a dozen schooners. A prettier girl you never laid eyes to, sir!”
“Educated woman?”
“Two years through college. Then her mother had a stroke, and Laura’s home again. She’s taken the village school, just to fill up her time. A good girl, if there ever was one. Good as gold, every way. I needn’t say more. I love her like a daughter. I suppose if I could have my dearest wish—”
“You’d have Hal marry her?”