"No, I don't," returned Lulu, promptly. "I'd like to be allowed to do some of the things they do that we mustn't, but I don't want to be a boy."
"That is right," said her father; "there are few things so unpleasant to me as a masculine woman, who wishes herself a man and tries to ape the stronger, coarser sex in dress and manners. I hope my girls will always be content, and more than content, to be what God has made them."
"If you meant to hit me that time, captain," remarked Betty, in a lively tone, "let me tell you it was a miserable failure, for I don't wish I was a man, and never did. Coarse creatures, as you say—present company always excepted—who would want to be one of them."
"I'd never have anything to do with one of them if I were in your place,
Bet," laughed her brother.
"Perhaps I shouldn't, only that they seem a sort of necessary evil," she retorted. "But why don't you invite some of us ladies to go along?"
"Because you are not necessary evils," returned her brother, with a twinkle of fun in his eye.
"You should, one and all, have an invitation if we could make you comfortable," said Harold, gallantly: "but the vessel has absolutely no accommodations for ladies."
"Ah, then, you are excusable," returned Betty.
The young men left the next morning, after an early breakfast. Zoe and Betty drove down to the wharf with them to see them off, and watched the departing vessel till she disappeared from sight.
Zoe went home in tears, Betty doing her best to console her.