“There’s no use talking,” he laughed; “I’ve got to go to bed. The wonderful adventures and hairbreadth escapes of Christopher Silburn, Esq., will keep for another time. I guess I’m in a hurry to feel my old bed.”
And before many minutes he was sound asleep in it, to know no more of ships, or tropics, or home, till he sprang up in the morning, thinking that he must hurry to clean the cabin.
Breakfast was hardly over before Harry Leonard, one of Kit’s old chums, called to see him; for by that time it was known all over Huntington that Kit was home. Harry was a good companion in every respect but one: the boys called him the biggest boaster in Fairfield County.
“I’m thinking of going to sea myself,” he said, after they had talked a few minutes. “I know where I can get a berth as second mate of a bark, after I’ve made a voyage or two. What do you do on the North Cape, Kit?”
“I’m assistant to the Captain,” Kit answered, with a sly wink at Vieve; “I write out the manifests and such things. He and I were the only ones who went ashore, and I spent several days with our agent in Sisal. I want you to try an orange out of the barrel of fruit the agent sent out to the ship for me. Oh, yes, I have to be back in five days more. I don’t know who’d make out all the papers if I didn’t get there.”
With Vieve hiding her face and shaking, it was hard for Kit to keep from laughing, but he did.
“Didn’t I give him a dose?” he roared, after Harry was gone. “He’s such an awful bragger I thought I’d pay him in his own coin. But isn’t it funny how you can change things by telling only one side of a story. Everything I said was true, only I didn’t tell it all.”
That afternoon Kit was out in the snow with a ladder and hammer and nails, fastening the end of the cornice that was loose; and before dark he had mended the shaky front gate, and replaced some missing pickets, and put a new hinge on the kitchen door.
“I’m not going to let you work so when you come home for a little holiday, Kit,” his mother said in the evening when they were sitting around the fire again. “You must rest.”
“Oh, that’s nothing at all,” Kit retorted. “I want the place to look shipshape for a particular reason. Somebody may be coming home one of these days, and he must find everything in good order. I know you don’t like to talk about that, mother, but it has to be talked about sometimes. As long as there is the least chance, we must not lose hope; and both Captain Griffith and Mr. Ysnard think there is still a possibility of father’s being alive. Of course it is a very slight chance, but still it is a chance, and we must not give up.”