“Oh, Kit, I am so glad to hear you say so!” Vieve exclaimed. “You know that’s what I have always said. And your Captain thinks so too!”
“Ah, don’t deceive yourselves, children,” Mrs. Silburn sighed. “How could your father be alive without coming home or even sending us word for nearly a year? And we know that his ship was lost.”
“Yes, there is no doubt his ship was lost, mother,” Kit admitted, “but still there are many things that may have happened through which he may be alive and yet not be able to get home, or even to write to us. Mr. Ysnard has a friend whose ship was lost at sea, but who got home more than two years after he had been given up. They took to the boats, of course, and all the boats were swamped but the one he was in. That one was picked up by a Norwegian brig bound for Honolulu. When they got into the Pacific, after going around Cape Horn, the brig was wrecked also, and the crew got to one of the little desert islands in the Pacific where ships never touch. They were there over a year before they got away. And there was an ending to that that won’t be likely to happen in our case. When the man got home, he found his ‘widow’ just about to be married to some other man.”
“No, I don’t think that will happen in our case!” Mrs. Silburn said, smiling in spite of herself. “Such remarkable escapes happen sometimes at sea, but we have no right to expect them. You may as well make up your mind that you will have to be the head of the family, Kit.”
“A poor head at present, I am afraid,” Kit answered. “But I think the day will come when I shall be able to take care of you both, if father doesn’t come back. That’s what I am planning for, at any rate. It’s not much of a position to be a cabin boy, but I expect to have a better one some day. It sha’n’t be my fault if I don’t. If I can show them that I am fit for a better place, I think I will get it in time. But even now I can do a little bit toward helping things along; I nearly forgot that part of the business.”
He put his hand in his pocket and took out some money, and laid a bright new two-dollar note in Genevieve’s lap.
“You know the dollar’s worth of stamps you sent me, Vieve. I was awfully glad to get them, too, for I felt pretty poor just then. So there’s the dollar, with a little interest added.”
He had not the heart to tell her that he had been robbed of the stamps. In all his accounts of his adventures he had not said a word about the hardships he had gone through. When he told about how nearly he had been arrested, it was only to turn it into a joke.
“No, I don’t want it, Kit,” Vieve protested, trying to hand him back the note. “I sent you that for a present.”
“No back talk to the head of the family, miss!” he laughed, giving his sister’s wavy hair a playful pull. “And here’s a little for you, mother. I can leave you only three dollars this time, as it will cost me a dollar to get back to the ship. But I hope before long to do better than that. If I could only make a little more money, I’d like to have some paint put on the house.”