The other man looked thoughtful. "To be frank, I would sooner have had the son of somebody we carried less goods for," said he. "With the steamers beating us everywhere we have to run our ships economically, and get the most out of our men, and I accordingly fancy that while it would not have made him as good a seaman, your son would have been a good deal more comfortable as one of the new cadet apprentices on board a steamer."
Mr. Niven smiled dryly. "I have no great wish to make my lad a seaman. The fact is, there's a tolerably prosperous business waiting for him, but in the meanwhile he will go to sea, and it seems to me that the best thing I can do is to let him. He will probably be quite willing to listen to what I have to tell him after a trip or two, and find out things I could never teach him on board your vessel."
"Well," said the shipowner with a little laugh, "it is often an effective cure as well as a rough one."
Mr. Niven left the office with a document in his pocket, and on Christmas morning Appleby found a big, blue envelope upon his breakfast plate.
"I wonder what is inside it," said Mrs. Niven.
Appleby sighed. "It has a business appearance," he said. "It will be to tell me when I'm to go to the office."
"Hadn't you better open it?" said Mrs. Niven with a glance at her husband, and there was silence while Appleby tore open the envelope. Then the colour crept into his face, and his fingers trembled as he took out a document.
"I can't understand it," he said. "This seems to be an apprentice's commission—indentures—for me. The ship is the Aldebaran."
There was a howl of delight from Chriss, and a rattle as he knocked over his coffee, but Appleby sat still, staring at the paper, while belief slowly replaced the wonder in his eyes. Then he rose up, and his voice was not even as he said, "It is real. I am to go in the Aldebaran. I have to thank you, sir, for this?"
Mr. Niven laughed. "No, my lad," he said. "It was my wife's doing, and if you are sorry by and by you will have her to blame."