d hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not
have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing
her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much
weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and
her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path
of duty in this respect. Accordingly she and Mainwaring met as they
could--clandestinely--and the stolen moments were very sweet. With equal
secrecy Lucinda had, at the request of her lover, sat for a miniature
portrait to Mrs. Gregory, which miniature, set in a gold medallion,
Mainwaring, with a mild, sentimental pleasure, wore hung around his neck
and beneath his shirt frill next his heart.

In the month of April of the year 1820 Mainwaring received orders
to report at Washington. During the preceding autumn the West India
pirates, and notably Capt. Jack Scarfield, had been more than usually
active, and the loss of the packet Marblehead (which, sailing from
Charleston, South Carolina, was never heard of more) was attributed
to them. Two other coasting vessels off the coast of Georgia had been
looted and burned by Scarfield, and the government had at last aroused
itself to the necessity of active measures for repressing these pests of
the West India waters.

Mainwaring received orders to take command of the Yankee, a swift,
light-draught, heavily armed brig of war, and to cruise about the Bahama
Islands and to capture and destroy all the pirates' vessels he could
there discover.

On his way from Washington to New York, where the Yankee was then
waiting orders, Mainwaring stopped in Philadelphia to bid good-by to his
many friends in that city. He called at the old Cooper house. It was
on a Sunday afternoon. The spring was early and the weather extremely
pleasant that day, being filled with a warmth almost as of summer. The
apple trees were already in full bloom and filled all the air with their
fragrance. Everywhere there seemed to be the pervading hum of bees, and
the drowsy, tepid sunshine was very delightful.

At that time Eleazer was just home from an unusually successful voyage
to Antigua. Mainwaring found the family sitting under one of the still
leafless chestnut trees, Captain Cooper smoking his long clay pipe and
lazily perusing a copy of the National Gazette. Eleazer listened with
a great deal of interest to what Mainwaring had to say of his proposed
cruise.