Expressing a desire to make a change of clothing at once, he was shown a retired corner where he might do so, and from which he emerged a few minutes later so altered in appearance that it is doubtful if his own father would have recognized him.
"That's something like it!" cried Bonny.
"Isn't it?" replied Alaric, surveying himself with great satisfaction in a mirror, and fully convinced that he now looked so like a sailor that no one could possibly mistake him for anything else. "Don't you think, though, that I ought to have the name of the sloop embroidered across the front of this sweater? All the sailors I have ever seen had theirs fixed that way."
"I suppose it would be a good idea," replied Bonny, soberly, though filled with inward laughter at the suggestion. "But perhaps you'd better wait until you see if the ship suits you, and whether you stay with us or not."
"Oh, I'll stay," asserted Alaric. "There's no fear but what I will, if you'll only keep me."
"Going yachting, sir?" asked the shopkeeper, politely, as he carefully folded Alaric's discarded suit of fine clothing.
"No, indeed," replied the boy, scornfully; "I'm going to be a sailor on the sloop Fancy, and I wish you would send those things down to her at once."
Ere the man could recover from his astonishment at this request sufficiently to make reply, Bonny interrupted, hastily:
"Oh no, Rick! we'll take them with us. There isn't time to have 'em sent."
"I should guess not," remarked the shopkeeper, in a very different tone from the one he had used before. "But say, young feller, if you're going to be a sailor you'll want a bag, and I've got a second-hand one here almost as good as new that I'll sell cheap. It come to me with a lot of truck from the sale of a confiscated sealer; and seeing that it's got another chap's name painted on it, I'll let you have it for one bob tuppence-ha'penny, and that'll make even money between us."