On Sunday morning he and Vieve went together to the old white church across the broad street, “just like old times,” as they said; and after Sunday school he had to explain to a score of friends where he had been and what he had been doing. His boy friends, he noticed, did not seem to think it any hardship to go to sea in a fine steamship; most of them would have jumped at the chance to go with him.
A whole week seemed so long when he left the North Cape to go home! And it seemed so short when the last day came! But the stage was coming down the hill, and Kit had his old overcoat on, which was a trifle short, but very warm. And under his arm was a little bundle of shirts and things that his mother had made for him.
“I may have a chance to get home after the next voyage,” he said, when they were half smothering him with good-bys in the cold hall, “and I may be gone for six months; there’s no telling. But I’ll write whenever I can, you may be sure, and tell you where to send letters. Turk, you’re pawing me all to pieces, old fellow. Good-by, Vieve; good-by, mother. I’d keep father’s chair and things ready for him, if I were you, for he might walk in most any day. Good-by, Turk. He knows I’m going away, doesn’t he?”
In a minute more he was in the stage, his mother waving to him from the door, Vieve throwing kisses to him from the gate, and Turk jumping in the snow, barking furiously.
“That’s a pretty little sister you’ve got,” said Silas, when a turn in the road hid the old house from sight.
“I’m glad you think so,” Kit laughed, “for everybody says she is the image of me!”
He was not the first boy who has tried to laugh on leaving home, to conceal very different feelings.
CHAPTER V.
A BURGLAR IN THE CABIN.
“OH, this is ahead of being a cabin passenger on one of the big liners!” Kit said to himself, as he hurried through the brick tunnel that led to the wharf of Martin’s Stores. “The passenger knows where he’s going, so he doesn’t have the fun of wondering. But I don’t know. Maybe the ship has been chartered for China while I’ve been away; or it might be for Russia, to carry grain. There’s no seaport in the world that we mightn’t go to. I think one will suit me just about as well as another, though I’d rather like to cross the ocean.”