"I'll write and tell you when I've done it," said Joan. "I'll take all the responsibility. Good-by! Good-by!"
The conductor hoisted him aboard and he slowly mounted the stairs. He paused at the top to wave a feeble hand, and then, subsiding heavily into a seat, sat thinking out a long and polite letter of refusal.
[CHAPTER XVII]
JOAN HARTLEY'S letter to her father was not so easy to write as she had imagined. She tore up draft after draft, and at last, in despair, wrote him a brief and dutiful epistle, informing him that she had changed her name to Tremblett. She added—in a postscript—that she expected he would be surprised; and, having finished her task, sat trying to decide whether to commit it to the post or the flames.
It was a question that occupied her all the evening, and the following morning found her still undecided. It was not until the afternoon, when a letter came from Captain Trimblett, declining in violent terms and at great length to be a party to her scheme, that she made up her mind. The information that he had been recalled to Salthaven on the day following only served to strengthen her resolution, and it was with a feeling of almost pious thankfulness that she realized the advantages of such an arrangement. She went out and posted her letter to her father, and then, with a mind at ease, wrote a nice letter to Captain Trimblett, full of apologies for her precipitancy, and regretting that he had not informed her before of what she called his change of mind. She added that, after mature deliberation, she had decided not to return to Salthaven until after he had sailed.
Captain Trimblett got the letter next morning and, hurrying off to the nearest post-office, filled up a telegraph-form with a few incisive words dashed off at white heat. He destroyed six forms before he had arrived at what he considered a happy mean between strength and propriety, and then at the lady clerk's earnest request altered one of the words of the seventh. A few hours later he was on his way to Salthaven.
It was late when he arrived and the office of Vyner and Son was closed. He went on to Laurel Lodge, and, after knocking and ringing for some time in vain, walked back to the town and went on board his ship. The new crew had not yet been signed on, and Mr. Walters, the only man aboard, was cut short in his expressions of pleasure at the captain's return and sent ashore for provisions.
"Time you went to sea again," said the captain a little later as the boatswain went on his hands and knees to recover the pieces of a plate he had dropped.
"I wish I'd gone a month ago, sir," said Mr. Walters. "Shore's no place for a sailorman."