“That’s just where I shall have to go to-morrow,” Kit announced. “I see by the paper that the Trinidad is due this afternoon, and it’s not fair to stay away too long. I’ll be back again for a few days, you know, but I must be on hand for the next voyage.”
It was purely by accident that he mentioned it just as Vieve showed how anxious she was to see the metropolis; but the coincidence set him to thinking. Here he had been half over the world, and Vieve had never been further than Bridgeport. Why shouldn’t he give her a trip to New York?
“How would you like to go along with me, Vieve?” he asked. “I’ll show you my ship, and bring you back in two or three days.”
“Oh, Kit!” his mother exclaimed; “that’s just like a boy. How can the child go to New York without any clothes fit to wear?”
“Bother the clothes,” Kit retorted, still just like a boy. “She’s not going to set the fashions, is she? I’ll lend her one of my blue suits.”
It was so quickly settled that Vieve was to go, that Mr. Silburn was led to exclaim:—
“There’s no parental discipline at all in this family, is there?”
“Well, there’s none needed, that’s one thing,” Mrs. Silburn answered; and she sat up half the night getting Vieve ready. She was relieved to find that they would not have to go to a hotel, for there would be any number of vacant staterooms on the Trinidad.
That trip to New York with Vieve was one of the greatest pleasures that Kit had ever enjoyed, next to finding his father. Everything was so new to her. She had never even been in a railway train before. And Mr. Clark was so kind to her, and took her all over the ship, and she was so delighted with everything. And in the evening he had a talk with the purser in their office that must have been very satisfactory, for next morning he said to Vieve:—
“Vieve, do they have tailor shops for girls? I mean places where a girl can buy things all ready to put on, the way a man can?”