invited with great ceremony to a stately
tea-drinking at the house of the owner of the Sabrina. "Now we shall catch
larks," said he; and dressed in a new suit, whose gray tint set off the
smoothness of his tanned cheek with the color sometimes mantling through
the brown, he entered the house with all the composure of a gentleman used
to nothing but high days and holidays. Not that either the state or
ceremony at Mr. Maurice's required great effort to encounter with
composure--trivial enough at its best, wonderful though it was to the
townsfolk, unused to anything beyond. But Andrew had seen the world in
foreign parts, and neither Mr. Maurice's mansion-house and gardens, nor
his gay upholstery, nor his silver tea-service, nor his condescending
manners, struck the least spark of' surprise from Andrew's eyes, or gave
them the least shadow of awe.

"This is some mistake," said the owner graciously, after preliminary
compliment had been duly observed. "How is it that you are rated on the
books as a boy--you as much a man as you will ever be?"

"A long voyage, sir, slow sailing and delays over so many disasters as
befell us, three years out in the stead of a year and a half--all that
brings one to man's estate before his reckoning."

"But the last part of the time you must have done able seaman's service?"

"The captain and I together," said Andrew with his bright laugh. "We were
officers and crew and passengers, cox'n and cook, as they say."

"A hard experience," said Mr. Maurice.

"Oh, not at all, but worth its weight in gold--to me, at least. Why, sir,
it taught me how to handle a ship as six years before the mast couldn't
have done."

"Good! We shall see to what purpose one of these days. And you have had
your share of schooling, they tell me?"

"All that the academy had to give, sir."

"And that's enough for any one who has the world to tussel with. How
should you like to have gone through such hard lines, Frarnie?" turning to
his daughter, a pale, moon-faced girl, her father's darling.

"Were you never afraid?" she asked in her pretty simpering way.

"Not to say afraid," answered Andrew, deferentially. "We knew our
danger--two men alone in the leaky, broken brig--but then we could be no
worse off than we were before; and as for the others--"

"They got their deserts," said Mr. Maurice.

"The poor fellows left us in such a hurry that they took hardly any water
or biscuit; and at the worst our fate could no