One day after one of the youth’s little visits to the terrace, Captain and Mrs. Stimpson were sitting at the door enjoying the afternoon breeze which came fresh from the ocean, and watching the craft in the harbor, when Judith came skipping up to the door, with a great red rose in her hand. Her father accosted her:
“Judy, my gal, where have you been? Sir’s flower! Come, light old daddy’s pipe for him, and tell what that youngster has been talking about so long at the gate.”
“Oh, I will, sir,” (jumping on her father’s knee, and putting the rose in his button-hole,) “if you will please call me Judith, and not keep calling yourself old daddy. You are not old, I am sure. He always says pa, or my father, and it sounds so much prettier—don’t it, ma?”
“He! who’s he?” chuckled the delighted father, winking to his wife.
“Why, didn’t you say George Fayerweather, sir?” asked Judith, stroking his chin. “He often asks me why I don’t call you two, pa and ma. Now, wont you promise not to laugh at me if I call you so sometimes?”
“You may call me what you please, if you don’t call me too late to dinner,” said her father. “But you don’t tell your old dad—father, I mean—what you’ve been talking about.”
“Why, he says,” she replied in a tremulous voice, her rosy lip quivering, “he’s going to sea soon, to be gone a year; and he says”—her eyes brightening—“that he means to bring you home the handsomest pipe he can find up the Straits.”
“I thank the lad, I thank him,” said the captain, with his usual sonorous h-m-gh; “that youngster’s a smart chap.” Turning to his wife—“Mind what I say, he’ll turn out something remarkable.”
“And he is going to bring you, mother, a beautiful tortoise shell snuff-box.”
“And what is he going to bring you, my darling?” said her father.