"He is neither one nor the other. He is a young man about my age, a printer by trade, and he is going to New York to find work."
"Why doesn't he find work in Boston? There are more printers in Boston than there are in New York."
"That may be; but he prefers to work in New York. He's tired of
Boston."
"Perhaps Boston is tired of him—is that so? I want to accommodate, but I don't want to get anybody into trouble, nor get there myself."
John saw that there was no evading the captain's questions, and so he resolved to tell the false story he had thought of on his way to the sloop.
"Well," said John, "if I must tell you the whole story, the case is this: He is a young fellow who has been flirting with a girl, who wants to marry him, and now her parents are determined that he shall marry her, and he is as determined that he will not; and he proposes to remove secretly to New York. He would have come to see you himself, but his coming might awaken suspicion on the part of some one acquainted with the affair, who might see him and know him. So I came to do the business for him."
"He is in a fix, sure," answered the captain; "if there is any man in the world I would help, it is the man who is trying to escape from the girl he don't want to marry. How much will he pay for his passage?"
"He will pay your price if it is reasonable. He is not a pauper, though he has not much of a money surplus. He will satisfy you as to that."
"Send him along, then; this sloop will sail on Saturday at two o'clock, P.M. He better not come aboard until just before we sail, or somebody may upset his plans, and the girl get him, after all."
"All right; he will be here on the mark, and I shall be with him to see him off," answered John, as he turned upon his heels to report his success to Benjamin.