“I never had any regret at going ashore before, Captain,” he said, as he shook the Captain’s hand in bidding him good-by. “But this time it seems almost like leaving home. It has been so pleasant on the North Cape, and you have always been so kind, I should feel strange to belong anywhere else. If I accept Mr. Clark’s offer, I’ll not belong on the old ship any longer, and it makes me feel bad in advance.”
“I don’t like to think of your going, Kit,” the Captain answered, returning to the first name as a mark of affection; “but the manner of your going makes a great difference, you know. If you were going under compulsion, I should feel downright bad about it. Going to something better is a different matter entirely. I suppose when a United States senator is elected President he doesn’t have any great regrets about leaving his old seat in the Senate Chamber. And it is the same thing with you, in a smaller way. But we know each other, Kit, and though you may leave the ship, we will still be friends. Anyhow, when you are in need of a friend you need not go further than the cabin of the North Cape.”
There was so much to be done at home that Kit laid out a programme on his way to Bridgeport. The letter from New Zealand he thought the most important matter, and that should be considered first. Then the offer from Mr. Clark. He had pretty much made up his mind that that ought to be accepted; but if his mother opposed it he was ready to give it up. Then after all the business was done he could tell about his second voyage to Europe. This time he caught the stage to Huntington, and so saved himself a long walk.
“Why, you folks have grown so grand here I’m almost afraid to go in,” he laughed, looking up at the freshly painted house as his mother and Vieve ran out to the gate to meet him.
“Oh, I’m glad you think so!” Vieve answered, taking possession of the side opposite her mother. “I thought maybe we would seem too poor and common for you, since you’ve taken to travelling about with cardinals. But I know more about your cardinal now than you do, Mr. Supercargo, for Mr. Wright has translated his letter for me, and told me all about him.”
They were all too full of the New Zealand letter to let that stand long; and before Kit had been in the house many minutes he asked for it. When they gave it to him he read it carefully, then read it again, and thought over it for a few minutes without speaking.
“Well, it is not as bad as I feared,” he said, at length. “When Vieve wrote that you had received the letter, without saying what was in it, I thought there must be such bad news that you did not want to tell me. But this is only more delay. What little news there is in it is good news, for they seem to have found the scar, though they are not sure about it, and the teeth correspond with father’s. It looks more hopeful than ever, only we must wait till we can hear again. And the photograph ought to settle the question, when that comes. I will write to the consul again, and give him all the particulars we can all think of.”
“And that letter from the cardinal,” Mrs. Silburn suggested. “It seems he is a very great man, and the letter is to the Bishop of New Zealand—a Catholic of course, but I wouldn’t mind what he was if he could help us. This is a nice time of life for a God-fearing Protestant woman to begin talking about cardinals and bishops; but wouldn’t it be as well to send that letter on and ask the bishop to help us?”
Kit asked to see the translation before he gave any opinion about it, for he did not yet know what was in the letter.
“I am inclined to think it would be better to save this for another purpose,” he said, after he had read it. “I have never said so before, but I have often thought, and the same thing must have occurred to you, that I may have to go on to New Zealand. It is a long journey, but any of us would go further than that, further than the end of the world, to have father with us again. If I should go there, this letter would be a very valuable thing to take with me, and I think it ought to be kept for that. The only thing is to have some reasonable certainty that the man in the hospital is really father. With any good evidence of that, even very slight evidence, I should go over there at once.”