"All right, sir."
"I suppose you'd like to know who I am?" said the sailor, as they moved off together.
"I suppose you're a sailor."
"You can tell that by the cut of my jib. Yes, my lad, I'm captain of the Argo, now in port. It's a good while since I've been in York. For ten years I've been plying between Liverpool and Calcutta. Now I've got absence to come over here."
"Are you an American, sir?"
"Yes; I was raised in Connecticut, but then I began going to sea when I was only thirteen. I only arrived to-day, and I find the city changed since ten years ago, when I used to know it."
"Where are you staying—at what hotel?"
"I haven't gone to any yet; I used to stay with a cousin of mine, but he's moved. Do you know any good boarding place, where they'd make me feel at home, and let me smoke a pipe after dinner?"
An idea struck Jack. They had an extra room at home, or could make one by his sleeping in the sitting room. Why shouldn't they take the stranger to board? The money would certainly be acceptable. He determined to propose it.
"If we lived in a nicer house," he said, "I'd ask you to board at my mother's."