"I had to be honest," Jack replied, and added, with a little shade of unconscious patronage, "You'll see how it is yourself, old man, when it comes your turn. You have to make a square deal, of course."
"Yes, I s'pose so," assented the mate humbly. "I hope she won't tell Mrs. Fairhew."
"Oh, we told her together," Jack stated cheerfully. "Katrine thought we'd better. I'm glad I did, too; for she's written home about meeting us, and it's sure to get round to Uncle Randolph sooner or later."
"How did she take it?"
"Oh, do you know," returned Jack, laughing at the remembrance of his talk with Mrs. Fairhew, "I think she was more bothered that she hadn't guessed it than she was shocked at us. She couldn't help letting me see that she thought it an awfully good joke on Uncle Randolph. She said she should write to him to-day and remind him that she'd often told him he tried to keep me in leading strings. She said she did have a suspicion from your jocoseness when we first came over that there was some joke about our coming, but we parried her questions so well she forgot all about it. She said nobody could have dreamed of anything so preposterous, so of course she didn't guess it."
"Didn't she say it was on account of her age she didn't see through us?" queried Jerry, with a grin.
"By Jove, she did; and then turned it off by saying she never supposed a Marchfield would be engaged to a pirate. She says, though, that I've got to cut back at once. She won't have me going about with Katrine in a stolen yacht."
"It's time to start anyway. It'll be getting late by the time we're across, and if she's written home, the sooner the Merle is in Boston harbor the better. I suppose we can get off in a week?"
"We go to-morrow," Jack answered calmly.