"But he will want to know who I am, and will refuse to take me when he finds that I am a runaway."
"I can manage that, if you will leave it to me," answered John. "I will pledge you that he will never know that your name is Franklin."
"I agree, then, to commit myself to your care. See that you manage the affair well, for to New York I must go."
They parted; and John hurried away to see the aforesaid captain.
"Can you take a friend of mine to New York?" he asked.
"That depends on circumstances," answered the captain. "Who is your friend?"—a very natural inquiry,—precisely such a one as Benjamin thought would be made.
"He is a young man about my age, a printer, and he is going to New York to get work," replied John.
"Why don't he get work in Boston?" inquired the captain.
John saw that there was no evading the captain's questions, and so he suddenly resolved to fabricate a story, in other words, to tell a base lie.
"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 determined that he will not, and he proposes to remove secretly to New York. He would have come to see you himself, but it is not safe for him to appear out so publicly, and therefore he sent me to do the business."