I modestly replied that I had devoted a good deal of consideration to the matter, and would have gone on to say that I wished for nothing better had he not interrupted me.
"Very good; I've promised your mother to do the best I can for you, so you'll be apprenticed to the Yellow Diamond Line as soon as I can see about it. You'll probably be surprised to hear that I think you're a fool, but I suppose in this world there must be a proportion of fools to balance the wise men, or we'd all come to grief. Hum, ha!"
He was true to his promise, for the following week I received a notification to attend at the head office of the Yellow Diamond Line of clipper ships. Here I complied with the formalities, signed the necessary papers, and had the satisfaction of leaving the Company's office to all intents and purposes a member of the nautical profession. It was arranged that I should desert Sir Benjamin's employment at the end of the month, and after that I was confident my real career would commence. It is, I think, one of the most wonderful things in our poor human nature, that we should always look forward to the future with so much confidence, PROportionately the more when we have perhaps the least justification for it. For my own part, when I left the Company's office I would not have changed places with the Prime Minister himself; yet such is the perversity of fate that, not six hours from the time of my signing the papers, I would have given anything I possessed to have been allowed to forfeit my premium and to remain ashore. This is how it came about.
Sir Benjamin was laid up with an attack of gout, and it became necessary to obtain his signature to some important letters. About four o'clock in the afternoon, therefore, the chief clerk sent for me, and giving into my care a small despatch-bag, bade me take a cab, and drive with it to Sir Benjamin's residence in Holland Park. Nothing loth, off I set.
The East India merchant's home was a most imposing place, and it was with some little awe that I rang the great front-door bell, and requested the dignified butler to inform me if I could see his master. Saying he would find out, he ushered me into a small room off the hall, to which he presently returned with the request that I would accompany him up-stairs.
I found my employer propped up in a chair near the fire, nursing his swaddled leg. Beside him was seated a young lady I had never seen before, but of whom I had often heard my mother speak,—his daughter Maud.
When I entered she was for leaving us, but this Sir Benjamin would not permit. Having received the papers from my hands, he turned to her and said (and I regarded it as a mark of unusual condescension)—
"My dear, let me introduce Mr. John Ramsay to you; a young gentleman who is forsaking the East India Avenue to distinguish himself by falling off the topsail-yard. Mr. Ramsay, my daughter!"
Then he settled himself down to the papers I had brought, and I was left free for conversation with his daughter.
As a rule I am considered bashful with strangers, but such was Maud Plowden's wonderful knack of setting people at their ease, that I would defy any man to remain shy very long in her company. I do not mean to infer by this that she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, for though I have heard people go into ecstasies about that, her charm lay not so much in her face as in her voice and manner. Of one thing at least I am quite certain, had I a secret I was desirous of obtaining from a man, I would rather trust Maud to coax it from him than the most beautiful or dangerous woman in existence.