"I shall never need to go to sea after this trip, Captain." I was just on the point of telling him more, but my promise to the Bo's'n suddenly came to mind, and I shut my lips over my teeth as if they were screwed together.
"The reason I ask you is this," said the Skipper. "I shan't have anything to leave my niece, and my sister Mary 'Zekel is no better off than I am. You see," said Captain Schuyler, "there's usually a rich branch in a family and a poor one. I belong to the poor branch. We couldn't all be educated—money wouldn't hold out. I've got a brother who's fit to be a professor. Nothin' he don't know. Just as pleasant to me as if I was the most learned man in the world. That's the nice thing about the Schuylers. None of 'em ashamed of their relations. My mother was a cousin of the general's. I suppose you think I've got no right to the name of Schuyler, but I'd like to know who is nearer to a man than his own mother? Suppose my father's name wasn't Schuyler. I claim that I have just as much right to the hawk as if I was one of the rich ones, and my name is Schuyler as well as my mother's. Same blood runs in my veins. Maybe a poor quality of blood, but it's got Schuyler into it, and you can't get it out."
The day passed with a combination of haste and speed that I have never known equalled. It dragged when I thought that the setting sun would see Cynthia my wife. It flew when I thought how she would scorn me, flout me, and hate the very idea of being bound to me.
"Remember, Jones, it's only a 'sort-of' bond, not actual marriage," said the Skipper for the twentieth time as we pulled slowly along the shore, looking for a fresh supply of oysters.
When we returned, late in the afternoon, Cynthia was sitting on the shore clothed, but hardly in her right mind. I could not help pitying her, my poor dear! though she began to, as I had expected, flout me at once, not waiting, as most wives do, until after marriage. The blue dungaree had been washed, but it was streaked and wrinkled in places, and still damp in spots. A wave of pity welled up in my heart for this poor girl, who must consent to marry me, willy nilly. It seemed so brutal to force her into this thing. And yet I reflected that it was my portrait, of which I had caught a glimpse, hanging to her chain.
"She says you may call her Cynthy," whispered the Skipper in my ear. I left him and walked up from the boat. "I'd start right in on it if I was you."
Cynthia sat on the shelving bank of the little stream, throwing pebbles into the sea.
I started in bluntly, waiting for no preliminaries.
"I understand," said I, "perfectly, that you are yielding to your Uncle's wishes in this thing. I promise to treat you just as I have heretofore."
Had I not known for certain from the Skipper, as well as from herself, that Cynthia could never care for me, and that William Brown had an irrevocable hold upon her affections, I should have thought that she looked a trifle disappointed.