“Well, well,” said Caleb, rising; “let’s sleep on it. It’s never best to decide on anything too quickly.”
“If you’ll take up with my offer,” concluded the merchant, rising, too, “the craft can be made ready, and you can get away this day week.”
“Let’s think it over,” repeated the old sailor, bound not to be hurried into the business; but Don went to bed so excited by the prospect that it was hours before he was able to sleep.
“Did a fellow ever have a better chance for fun and adventure?” was his last thought as he finally sank into a fitful slumber.
CHAPTER XXII
INTO BAD COMPANY
If I were to follow up my own inclinations I should much prefer to stay in the company of Brandon Tarr and of his two good friends, the honest, hearty old seaman, Caleb Wetherbee, and the jovial, philanthropic ship owner, Adoniram Pepper. And I feel sure that the reader, too, would much prefer to remain with them.
But, for the sake of better understanding that which is to follow, I shall be obliged for a short time to request the company of the reader in entirely different scenes, and among rather disreputable characters.
Mr. Alfred Weeks, who had been in receipt of so many favors in times past from the firm of Adoniram Pepper & Co., is the first person who will receive our attention.
Weeks was “an effect of a cause.” He was of the slums, his ancestry came from the slums; he was simply, by accident of education (compulsory education, by the way) once removed from the usual “gutter snipe” of the city streets.
Who his parents were, he could not, for the life of him, have told. I do not mean to suggest for an instant that Weeks was not to be pitied; but that he was deserving of pity I deny. He had been saved from the debasing influences of the reform school in his youth by a philanthropic gentleman (who might have been the twin of Adoniram Pepper), and sent to a Western State where he was clothed, fed, and educated by a kind hearted farmer, whom he repaid by theft and by finally running away.