“That’s a good job for you,” said Fraser, slowly.
“Same time let the hands know I wish ’em to keep their mouths shut,” pursued the skipper; “just tell them it was a girl that you knew, and I don’t want it talked about for fear of getting you into trouble. Keep me out of it; that’s all I ask.”
“If cheek will pull you through,” said Fraser, with a slight display of emotion, “you’ll do. Perhaps I’d better say that Miss Tyrell came to see me, too. How would you like that?”
“Ah, it would be as well,” said Flower, heartily. “I never thought of it.”
He stepped ashore, and at an easy pace walked along the steep road which led to the houses above. The afternoon was merging into evening, and a pleasant stillness was in the air. Menfolk working in their cottage gardens saluted him as he passed, and the occasional whiteness of a face at the back of a window indicated an interest in his affairs on the part of the fairer citizens of Seabridge. At the gate of the first of an ancient row of cottages, conveniently situated within hail of The Grapes, The Thorn, and The Swan, he paused, and walking up the trim-kept garden path, knocked at the door.
It was opened by a stranger—a woman of early middle age, dressed in a style to which the inhabitants of the row had long been unaccustomed. The practised eye of the skipper at once classed her as “rather good-looking.”
“Captain Barber’s in the garden,” she said, smiling. “He wasn’t expecting you’d be up just yet.”
The skipper followed her in silence, and, after shaking hands with the short, red-faced man with the grey beard and shaven lip, who sat with a paper on his knee, stood watching in blank astonishment as the stranger carefully filled the old man’s pipe and gave him a light. Their eyes meeting, the uncle winked solemnly at the nephew.
“This is Mrs. Church,” he said, slowly; “this is my nevy, Cap’n Fred Flower.”
“I should have known him anywhere,” declared Mrs. Church; “the likeness is wonderful.”