"Thank you, sir," replied the boy—not because he felt grateful to Captain Beardsley for giving him nearly nine hundred dollars of another's man's money, but because he knew he was expected to say it.
"Seventeen hundred dollars and better will keep your folks in grub and clothes for quite a spell, won't it?" the captain continued. "But law! what am I saying? It ain't a drop in the bucket to such rich people as you be."
Marcy listened, but said nothing. He thought he knew what Beardsley had on his mind.
"Some folks pertend to think we're going to have the very toughest kind of a war, but I don't," said the latter. "The Yankees don't come of fighting stock, like we Southern gentlemen do; but if a war should come, I suppose your folks are well fixed for it?"
"About as well fixed as most of the planters in the settlement," answered the pilot. "You know we've had the best of crops for a year or two back."
"But I mean—you see—any money?" inquired the captain cautiously—so very cautiously that he thought it necessary to whisper the words.
"Oh, yes; we have money. How could we live without it?"
"That's so; how could you? I reckon you've got right smart of a lot, ain't you?"
"Mother has some in the bank at Wilmington, but just how much I don't know. I never asked her."
The young pilot's gaze was fastened upon the men who were at work getting the provisions aboard, but for all that, he could see that Beardsley was looking at him as if he meant to read his most secret thoughts.