“It was a bully race, Mr. Ricks. I wish you could have been aboard with me,” Joey declared enthusiastically.
“Hum-m-m! Catch me on a yacht!” Cappy's tones were indicative of profound disgust.
“Ricks, you're a kill-joy,” old Gurney struck in. “All you think of is making money, and you've made so much of it I should think the game would have palled on you long ago. I tell Joey to go it while he's young—while he has the capacity for enjoyment.”
“Joe, I tell you now, as I've told you before, you're spoiling this boy. When he's twenty-five years old he comes into a fortune and you're not even preparing him for the task of handling that money wisely. You bought Joey that schooner yacht, didn't you?”
“I bought her cheap,” old Joe Gurney protested lamely.
“They cost a fortune to maintain, Joe. Now if Joey wanted some salt-water experience you should have sent him to sea as quartermaster on one of your own Red Funnel liners; presently he would have worked up to second mate; then first mate, and finally skipper. By that time he would have known the salt-water end of his father's business, after which he could sit in at a desk and learn the business end. Somehow, Joe, when I see a shipping man's son fooling away his time on a pleasure yacht instead of learning the shipping business, I feel as if I'd just taken a dose of ipecac.”
“Godfather is out of sorts,” Joey soliloquized sagely, and resolved to wait a day or two before broaching the subject of a loan. Cappy Ricks surveyed the young fellow severely.
“Joey,” he began, “I've no doubt you're quite a sailor on your handsome yacht, in your yachting uniform, with all the real head work to be done by your sailing master—”
“Not a bit of it,” Joey protested. “I'm not that kind of a yachtsman. I'm the captain tight and the midshipmite, and the crew take orders from me, because I don't employ a sailing master.”
“Do you mean to tell me that when you go on a cruise to the West Indies you navigate the yacht yourself—lay out your own courses and work out your own position?”