Mrs. Drew laughed.
"He says the same of you," she told him. "But if you really get away you owe it to your mother. I am the god out of the machine—I. I was tying up the flowering-currant bush by the fence, and Captain March came by. He was hurrying, my dear. I never saw him hurry before. What do sailors say—rolling both scuppers under? Yes; it was like that. I called to him and asked him if he had seen my son. Yes, he had. Then I told him that if he didn't sail soon you would need a second vacation to recover from the nervous strain of waiting for this one to begin. I let him know how you had done nothing for two days but sit by your baggage and start at every sound. I told him, too, that you were constantly worrying lest something should happen to keep you at home at the last minute; so the sooner you got away the better."
"Oh, mother! mother!" protested Drew, smiling.
"Oh, I put it strongly—trust me for that. He said he had seen you, but you had said nothing. I knew it would be like that. Oh, you were two Buddhas sitting under the sacred Bo-tree, contemplating eternity. Isn't that what the Buddha is supposed to do? You were like that, you two, anyway. Well, he explained everything. He told me that two men had promised to go out with him as mate, but changed their minds. He thought it queer. Another asked to go, but, for personal reasons, he didn't want him. But as soon as he knew just how you felt he said he'd go right off for this man. I thought it very good of him. I hope the man isn't a rough character. But, Robert, you didn't tell me that his wife and daughter are going." She looked at her son reproachfully.
"Whose wife and daughter? I can't follow you," he said.
"The captain's, of course."
"I believe he did mention the fact that his wife and little girl were going, but it made no impression on me," Drew told her. "I have scarcely thought of it since."
"His little girl! Robert, haven't you ever seen her?"
"No, mother."
"Well, I suppose you knew of her, though they don't attend your church." Then she changed the subject with an abruptness that was so characteristic that Drew's thoughts slipped away from the question he had been about to ask. "But, do you know," she said, "I think he decided to go partly because he forgot his meat for dinner and he's afraid of that round, good-natured-looking little wife of his. His hurry to get away now looks as if he'd been too busy finding a mate to get home earlier. He told me about it with an intimate chuckle that seemed to take me right into his family closet and introduce me to the skeleton."