“It was all an accident. I will tell you another time. What was the cause of your being abducted this way, Pet?”
“Why, if your coming was an accident, mine was a mistake—thought it was your Erminie, you know, because I look so much like her, I expect. And now, what’s going to turn up next? Are you going to take me home?”
“Hardly, I fancy,” said Captain Reginald, who, with the rest, had all this time been watching them and listening, half-curious, half-amused. “Mr. Ray, if that is his name, will hardly get back as easily as he come.”
“Why, you hateful old brigand! You wouldn’t be so ugly as to keep him whether he wanted to or not?” said Pet, with flashing eyes.
“Sorry to disoblige a lady, but in this case, I fear I must,” he said bowing sarcastically.
Pet, having by this time got over the first shock of her surprise, like all the rest, was forcibly struck with the resemblance between the smuggler-captain and her handsome lover. Her bright eyes danced, for a few seconds, from one to another, and then she burst out with:
“Well, now, if you two don’t look as much alike as two strung mackerels, my name’s not Pet. I said all along, Ray, you were his very image, and I’ll leave it to everybody in general if you ain’t. If you were only twenty years older, and had whiskers sticking out from under your chin like a row of shaving-brushes, you would be as much alike as a couple of peas.”
“’Pon my soul, the likeness is stror’nary!” exclaimed Black Bart, looking from one to another. “You look enough alike to be his mother, cap’n.”
“Really, I feel flattered to resemble a young gentleman half so handsome,” said the captain, in his customary tone of careless mockery, “The resemblance must be very striking, since it attracts the notice of every one.”
“I declare, it’s real funny!” said Pet. “Maybe you will turn out to be relatives, by-and-by—who knows? It always ends so in plays and novels, where everybody discovers, at last, they are not themselves at all, but somebody else.”