“I will!” replied the captain.
There was a pause here of considerable length, during which the captain observed that Martha’s nostrils began to twitch nervously. Jane, observing the fact, became similarly affected. To the captain’s practised eye these symptoms were as good as a barometer. He knew that the storm was coming, and took in all sail at once (mentally) to be ready for it.
It came! Martha and Jane Dunning were for once driven from the shelter of their wonted propriety—they burst simultaneously into tears, and buried their respective faces in their respective pocket-handkerchiefs, which were immaculately clean and had to be hastily unfolded for the purpose.
“Now, now, my dear girls,” cried the captain, starting up and patting their shoulders, while poor little Ailie clasped her hands, sat down on a footstool, looked up in their faces—or, rather, at the backs of the hands which covered their faces—and wept quietly.
“It’s very cruel, George—indeed it is,” sobbed Martha; “you know how we love her.”
“Very true,” remarked the obdurate captain; “but you don’t know how I love her, and how sad it makes me to see so little of her, and to think that she may be learning to forget me—or, at least,” added the captain, correcting himself as Ailie looked at him reproachfully through her tears—“at least to do without me. I can’t bear the thought. She’s all I have left to me, and—”
“Brother,” interrupted Martha, looking hastily up, “did you ever before hear of such a thing as taking a little girl on a voyage to the whale-fishing?”
“No, never,” replied the captain; “what has that got to do with it?”
Both ladies held up their hands and looked aghast. The idea of any man venturing to do what no one ever thought of doing before was so utterly subversive of all their ideas of propriety—such a desperate piece of profane originality—that they remained speechless.
“George,” said Martha, drying her eyes, and speaking in tones of deep solemnity, “did you ever read Robinson Crusoe?”