ld be
sailing together through foreign parts; for Louie's father, the old
fisherman, was all her household, and a maiden aunt, who earned her
livelihood in nursing the sick and attending the dead, would be glad to
come any day and take Louie's place in the cottage.

At the end of the week, Mr. Maurice sent for Andrew to his counting-room;
and after that, on one device or another, he had him there the greater
part of every day, employing him in a score of pleasant ways--asking his
advice as to the repairs of the Sabrina, taking him with him in his chaise
jogging through the shipyard, where a new barque was getting ready for her
launching, examining him the while carefully from time to time after his
wont; at last taking him casually home to dinner with him one day, keeping
him to tea the next, and finally, fully satisfied with the result of his
studies in that edition of human nature, giving him the freedom of the
family as much as if he had been the son of the house.

"I've some plans ahead for you, my boy," said he one day with a knowing
shake of the head; and Andrew's innocent brain began to swim straightway
between the new barque and the Sabrina.

"Look at him!" said Mr. Maurice to his wife one evening as Andrew walked
in the garden with Miss Frarnie. "My mind's made up about him. He's the
stuff for a sea-captain, afraid neither of wind nor weather nor the face
of clay--can sail a ship and choose her cargo. He's none of your coxcombs
that go courting across the way: he's a man into the core of his heart,
and as well bred as any gentleman that walks; though Goodness knows how he
came by it."

"These sea-coast people," said his wife, reflectively (she was inland-born
herself), "see the world and learn."

"Well, what do you say to it? I don't find the flaw in him. If Heaven had
given me a son, I'd have had him be like this one; and since it didn't,
why here's my way to circumvent Heaven."

"Oh, my dear," said the wife, "I can't hear you talk so. And besides--"

"Well? Besides what?"

"I think it is always best to let such things take their own course. We
did."

"Of course we did," laughed Mr. Maurice. "But how about our fathers and
mothers?"

"I mean," said Mrs. Maurice, "not to force things."

"And who intends to force them? It's plain enough the young fellow took a
fancy to our Frarnie the first time he laid eyes on her, isn't it?"

"I mean," said Mrs. Maurice again, "that if Frarnie should have the same