Eleanor when she should come. The little bonnet with chocolate ribbands
did not keep them waiting and the first smile and kiss to Mrs. Amos
made _her_ sure that all was right. She had been able to see scarce
anything of Eleanor during the weeks on shore; it was a refreshment to
have her near again. But Eleanor had turned immediately to attend to
Mr. Esthwaite.

"This is the meanest, most abominable thing of a vessel," he said,
"that ever Christians travelled in! It is an absurd proceeding
altogether. Why if the boards don't part company and go to pieces
before you get to Tonga--which I think they will--they don't give room
for all three of you to sit down in the cabin at once."

"The deck is of better capacity," Eleanor told him briskly.

"Such a deck! I wonder _you_, cousin Eleanor, can make up your mind to
endure it. There is not a man living who is worth such a sacrifice.
Horrid!"

"We hope it won't last a great while," Mr. Amos told him.

"It won't! That's what I say. You will all be deposited in the bottom
of the ocean, to pay you for not having been contented on shore. I
would not send a dog to sea in such a ship!"

"Cousin Esthwaite, you had better not stay in a situation so
disagreeable to you. You harass yourself for nothing. Shake hands. You
see the skipper is going to make sail directly."

Eleanor with a little play in the manner of this dismissal, was enough
in earnest to secure her point. Mr. Esthwaite felt in a manner
constrained to take his departure. He presumed however in the
circumstances to make interest for a cousinly kiss for good bye; which
was refused him with a cooler demonstration of dignity than he had yet
met with. It nettled him.

"There was the princess," whispered Mr. Amos to his wife.

"Good!" said Mrs. Amos.

"Good bye!" cried Mr. Esthwaite, disappearing over the schooner's side.
"_You_ are not fit for a missionary! I told you so before."

Eleanor turned to Mrs. Amos, ignoring entirely this little transaction,
and smiled at her. "I hope he has not made you nervous," she said.

"No," said Mrs. Amos; "I am not nervous. If I did not get sick I should
enjoy it; but I suppose I shall be sick as soon as we get out of the
harbour."

"Let us take the good of it then, until we are out of the harbour,"
said Eleanor. "If the real 'Queen Esther' was at all like her namesake,
Ahasuerus must have had a disorderly household."

They sat down together on the little vessel's deck, and wa