"I'll call Katie, my daughter," said the landlady, "as I must attend to duty. Katie dear, come this way."
Kep thought he had never seen so winsome a girl before and he asked her to have something, but she took positively no notice.
Only a minute after, she pulled Kep on to her knee.
"The sweet little lamb," she said, "and oh, the black eyes of him. Jack, he is his mother's wopsy-popsy, I'll bet."
"What--how--why," the boy cried, wriggling away from her. "Can't you see I'm a man? Fourteen and began again?"
But Katie soothed him. "I'm sure you'd like a cup of tea," she said.
Yet he had some suspicions that if this were in reality a boozing den, the tea might be drugged, and that being hocussed, he might be robbed. But one look at sweet Katie convinced him that his suspicions were really unmanly.
"You'll sleep here to-night, won't you?" she said.
"Yes, if they don't keep me on board the _Breezy_."
Jack roared with laughter and Katie couldn't help joining in.
"I think," said Jack, "that even the first lieutenant has been appointed, and they will have to dispense with your services, sonny. Why didn't you 'phone to the Port Admiral, and say you were coming?"
"You _funny_ boy!" said Katie. "But how much money is in that purse of yours, that makes your trousers pocket bulge out so?"
"Oh, enough to pay for the tea, twenty times over."
"Why dear, I don't mean that," and the girl reddened a little.
"Well," she added, "you'll count all your gold out there on the table, and give it to my mother except just a handful of silver. She'll give you a receipt for it, and you'll come back here to sleep."
Kep looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Then the boy counted his gold and notes out as innocently as a boy of nine might have done, and Mrs. Monck, the landlady of the _Blue Ensign_, took it in charge.
Jack told him he would meet him here again that evening, told him also where to charter a shore-boat.
"Hillo you, what's the fare to the _Breezy_?"
The men jumped in and off they pulled. There was a rudder, and Kep took the tiller.
"Don't know yet. Going to see the first officer."
"Humph! well, that means the commander or first luff. The _Breezy_ is a warship."
The way Kep steered that boat along-side the _Breezy_--sta'board side mind you--was a source of great fun to some middies.