“No; I should have been glad to do so; was, indeed, very urgent for the right at once to claim her as my own and provide for all her wants, but—” and he turned to Violet with a slight smile—“ladies are, I am inclined to think, almost always desirous to defer the final plunge, even when they would be by no means willing to resign all prospect of matrimony.”
“Yes; the step is so irretrievable and so important—involving so much of happiness or misery—that it is no wonder we pause and half shrink back on the brink of the precipice,” she returned with an arch glance up into his face. “But go on, please; I am deeply interested. How long were you forced to wait, poor fellow?” stroking his cheek caressingly with her pretty white hand. “I was only a little girl then, so have no need to feel as though you should have waited for me.”
“No; you were waiting and growing up, ready for me,” he answered with tender look and smile.
“Yes, so it seems; and it was just as well that you were enjoying Grace in the meantime, and that she was happy with you, as I am quite sure she must have been.”
“I think she was,” he said; “she often told me so, though our many partings wrung both our hearts.
“I had another leave of absence within the year, and then we were married. We went to Niagara for a week, then came back and started our housekeeping.
“It was only in a small way. Harry and I had taken a double house, that our wives might be close together when their husbands were off at sea, yet each have her own little domicile—a plan which worked very nicely.
“On my next home-coming I found a new treasure; Grace met me with Max in her arms, and perhaps you can imagine the joy and pride with which I took him into mine after the mutual tender embrace between his parents. I had been gone for over a year, and he was a fine, big fellow, old enough to be afraid of his father at first, but not many days had passed before he would come to me even from his mother, and strangely enough, it seemed to please her mightily.”
“Ah, I can understand that,” remarked Violet.
“I had a long leave that time,” the captain went on, “and a very happy time it was. Of course it was succeeded by a sorrowful parting, for I was ordered off to the coast of China, and again more than a year elapsed before I saw wife and children—a little daughter had been added to my treasures in the meanwhile, you will understand, and having been apprized of the fact, I was very eager to see her as well as her mother and our son.