'It isn't a dream then?'
'No dream, little un,' said the skipper across the table. 'You are saved.'
'Oh, I don't like Salvation Army people,' cried Lotty; 'the band is vile. But this can't be heaven surely?'
'A long way off that port, my pretty. But you are saved, all the same, from a watery grave.'
'It were a 'tarposition of Providence, it were,' said the first mate. 'Hadn't been for the boy Ben, here, who is doin' dooty as second-mate, I wouldn't have seen Miss Mite. It's 'im ye've got to thank, little missie—nobut Ben.'
'And God,' said the skipper reverently.
'And God,' assented the mate.
'I remember all now,' said the gipsy lass, 'and I am very thankful; but they will all be so sad on shore, Chops and Mary and all. You couldn't land me, could you?'
'Ay, little dear,' laughed the skipper, 'we'll land ye; but it will be in Trondhjem. But we've made up our minds to make ye as happy as Arctic summer days are long.'
Having once comforted herself with the thought that, although Antony and Chops and all the rest would mourn for her for a time as dead, there would be such a joyful meeting to make up for all when she got back again, she settled herself to be happy and to enjoy her strange, new life. When the captain and the mate and the boy Ben went on deck, the motherly lady dressed her and tidied her hair as much as it ever would tidy—for it was, like Lotty herself, very irrepressible—she sat down to breakfast. Lotty was not shy, no well-brought-up child of the world ever is. She could not even be timid beside so kindly a soul as the skipper's wife.