“Stay with us for awhile, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Captain Fordyce; “and perhaps we will get you out of all this. I want a first mate for my ship. Your husband is a man of many parts, I think we should work well together.”
“And I should have you to talk to,” exclaimed Nina. “How charming that would be! Don’t you want to be a sailor, Captain Eversleigh?”
He glanced at his handsome uniform, laughed heartily, then said: “What are you two people looking forward to? Are you going to sail the wide ocean all the days of your lives?”
“My wife’s plan,” said Captain Fordyce, “is for us to forsake the sea in about ten or fifteen years, and settle down on shore, and devote ourselves to the education of our child, but one is certain of nothing in this life.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Eversleigh to Nina, “if you do take up your habitation upon land, let it be near us--and now tell me something about the child. What is he like?”
“He is the most perfect thing you ever saw,” cried Nina, rapturously, “a little, dark-haired boy with an exquisite head, and the sweetest hands and feet, and the disposition of a seraph.”
“And only the other morning,” said her husband, with qualifying calmness, “I saw him with a handful of your brown hair in his hand.”
“Don’t believe him, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Nina, anxiously. “Come and see for yourself.”
“And now we must go,” said Captain Fordyce, resolutely, “or we shall miss our train. We have been in London for three days, and I am anxious to get back to the ship.”
“Good-bye, good-bye,” said Nina, reluctantly, “don’t forget next week,” and she followed him slowly across the street. In the middle of an extremely muddy crossing she stopped to look back. There was a stir along the line of carriages, the Eversleigh’s coachman touched the chestnuts with his whip, they started, went a few steps, then stopped again.
“They may be there for an hour yet,” said Captain Fordyce, looking over his shoulder, “how would you like to be with them, little wife?”
Despite her certain knowledge that this was barefaced angling for a compliment, she could not keep the softly spoken words from her lips, “I had rather be with you.”
He looked at her from his station on the curbstone,--well-pleased; for nothing flatters a man so much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.