"But there is no war?"
"No, but they claim to take our goods billed for any French port, and as many men as they choose to call English."
"And she beat them off?"
"Yes; Mr. Wynne gave the master a silver tankard, and a hundred dollars for the men."
De Courval was excited and pleased. It was no day of tame, peaceful commerce. Malayan pirates in the East, insolent English cruisers to be outsailed, the race home of rival ships for a market, made every voyage what men fitly called a venture. Commerce had its romance. Strange things and stranger stories came back from far Indian seas.
After this introduction, he thanked his instructor, and returning to the counting-house, was gravely welcomed and asked to put in French two long letters for Martinique and to translate and write out others. He went away for his noonday meal, and, returning, wrote and copied and resolutely rewrote, asking what this and that term of commerce meant, until his back ached when he went home at six. He laughed as he gave his mother a humorous account of it all, but not of the sweeping.
Then she declared the claret good, and what did it cost? Oh, not much. He had not the bill as yet.