“I give you my word of honor that no young lady has come to Boston, since I went abroad, for whom I care a brass farthing,” Adam assured his hostess. “The further you go in this, the more innocent you will find me.”
“Then are you turned lazy, or what is it that ails you,” inquired the Captain, “that you fail to leap, as, by my word, I had thought you would, to embrace this opportunity?”
“Oh, oh, poor dear Adam,” said the Captain’s wife, interrupting any answer Rust might have been framing, “perhaps I know what it is, at last.” She went to her husband quickly and whispered something in his ear.
“Hum!” said Phipps, who was inclined to be a bit short with his protégé for his many equivocal answers, “Why couldn’t he say so at once? See here, Adam, what’s all this rigmarole about your pride? If you haven’t got any money, what’s the odds to me? Who’s asking you to furnish any funds? I’ve got the brig and I’ve got provisions and arms in plenty. If that is what ails you, drop it, sir, drop it!”
Adam, willing to share another’s money as readily as he would give his own last penny to a friend, had thought of nothing half so remote as this to offer as an excuse for remaining in Boston, under the same sky with Garde. But now that it was broached, he fathered it as quickly and affectionately as if he had indeed been its parent.
“I had hoped it would not be unreasonable for me to crave a few days’ grace before giving you my answer to your generous proposition,” he said, “for I am not without hopes of replenishing our treasury at an early date.”
“But in the meantime——” started Phipps.
“Dearest,” interrupted his wife, with feminine tenderness of thought for any innocent pride, “surely you have no mind to sail to-night? And there are so many things for Adam to tell.”
The Captain, who had been drawing down his brow, in that serious keep-at-it spirit which through all his life was the backbone of his remarkable, self-made success, slacked off the intensity of his mood and smiled at his wife, indulgently. He loved her and he loved Adam above anything else in the world.
“Get you behind me, golden treasure,” he said, with a wave of his big, wholesome hand. “Adam, I would rather hear you talk than to pocket rubies.”