"He is the best father that ever was, but he never has time to stay anywhere. I wish you would tell me all about your scrape. It sounds terribly interesting. Will it make your head hurt?"
The cadet had forgotten all about that hard and damaged head of his, and he plunged into the heart of his adventure without bringing in Captain Bracewell and Margaret. Their fortunes were too personal and intimate to be lugged out for the diversion of strangers. Arthur Cochran followed the flight from the sailors' eating-house with the most breathless attention, and when David wound up with his head against the iron post and a ship's fireman about to kick his brains out, his audience sighed:
"Is that all? Things never happen to me. I am not very strong, you know, and they sort of coddle me, and trot me around to health resorts like a set of china done up in cotton. It makes me tired. Tell me all about being a cadet."
David fairly ached to spin the yarn of the Pilgrim wreck, but the cruel nurse cut the visit short, and Arthur Cochran had to depart with the assurance that he would come back next day "to hear the rest of it."
He was true to his word and found David so much stronger that the unruly patient was sitting up in bed and loudly demanding his clothes. It was the patient's turn to ask questions this time, and he was eager to know all about the occupations of a millionaire's son. The heir of the Cochran fortune had to do most of the talking. David demanded to know all about his automobiles, his horses, and his yacht, his trips to Florida and California, his private tutors, and his several homes among which he flitted to and fro like an uneasy bird. Before they realized how time had fled Mr. Cochran came to take Arthur home. The Trust magnate was in his usual hurry, and he volleyed these commands as if argument were out of the question:
"I have looked you up, Downes. The Black Star office speaks very well of you. Also the store in which you used to work. I sent a man out this morning. My boy has taken a great fancy to you. He seldom finds a boy he likes. I think it might do him good to have you around. I have told the people here that you are to be moved to my house to-night. You will stay there until you feel all right. If you wear well, and you are as capable as you look, I shall find something better for you to do than this dog's life at sea. Come along, Arthur. You shall see David this evening."
David's head was in a whirl. A gentleman who belonged in the "Arabian Nights" was bent upon kidnapping him. It seemed as rash to question the orders of this lordly parent as to disobey Captain Thrasher, but there was a look of stubborn resolution in the suntanned jaw of the young sailor and he was not to be so easily driven. He wavered in silence for a minute or two while Mr. Stanley P. Cochran eyed him with rising impatience. Visions of an enchanted land of wealth and pleasure danced before David's eyes, but even more clearly he saw the appealing figures of Captain Bracewell and Margaret. They needed him and he had promised to go to them. He looked up and shook his head as he said with much feeling:
"I don't know what makes you so good to me, sir. I never heard anything like it. But I can't accept your invitation. I can never thank you enough, but I belong somewhere else."
"You have no kinfolk here. I found out all that," exclaimed Mr. Cochran with a very red face. "Why can't you do as I tell you? Of course you can. Not another word! Come along, Arthur."
"I mean it," cried David. "I promised to stay with friends I met on shipboard."