"Um! About what I thought. Paying business, isn't it?"
"If it wasn't we wouldn't be in it," replied the boy.
"No, I suppose not; and it must pay big since it enables even the cabin-boy to drench himself with perfumery."
Ere Alaric could reply the stranger was walking rapidly away, and Bonny was calling him to supper.
The first mate apologized for serving this meal on deck, but that Captain Duff objected to the crew's presence at his table on this occasion. "So," said Bonny, "I told him he might eat alone, then, for I should come out here and eat with you."
"I hope he will always feel the same way," retorted Alaric, "for it doesn't seem as though I could possibly stay in that cabin long enough to eat a meal."
"Oh, I guess you could," laughed Bonny. "Anyway, it will be all right by breakfast-time, for the smell is nearly gone now. But I say, Rick Dale, what an awfully funny fellow you are anyway! What made you pay for all that truck? It must have taken every cent you had."
"So it did," replied Alaric. "But what of that? It was the easiest way to smooth things over that I knew of."
"It wouldn't have been for me, then," rejoined Bonny, "for I haven't handled a dollar in so long that it would scare me to find one in my pocket. But why didn't you let them take back the things we didn't need?"
"Because, having ordered them, we were bound to accept them, and I thought we needed them all. I'm awfully tired of such things myself, but I didn't know you were."