he did
have a good time over that. Captain Will will miss me when I'm promoted
to be captain."

"That will not be this voyage."

"Don't laugh at me. I have planned it all. Will is to have a big New York
ship, an East Indiaman, and I'm to be content with the little _Linnet_."

"Does he like that?"

"Of course. He says he is to take Linnet around the world. Now study,
please. _Via Lactea_" he exclaimed, bending forward and taking the book
out of her hand. "What do you know about the Milky Way?"

"I never shall know anything unless you give me the book."

"As saucy as ever. You won't dare, some day."

Marjorie studied, Morris kept his eyes on a book that he did not read;
neither spoke for fully three quarters of an hour. Marjorie studied with
no pretence: Master McCosh had said that Miss West studied in fifteen
minutes to more purpose than any other of her class did in an hour. She
did not study, she was absorbed; she had no existence excepting in the
lesson; just now there had been no other world for her than the wondrous
Milky Way.

"I shall have Miss West for a teacher," he had told Miss Prudence.
Marjorie wondered if he ever would. Mrs. Browning has told us:

"Girls would fain know the end of everything."

And Marjorie would fain have known the end of herself. She would not be
quite satisfied with Miss Prudence's lovely life, even with this
"compensation" of Prue; there was a perfection of symmetry in Miss
Prudence's character that she was aiming at, her character made her
story, but what Marjorie would be satisfied to become she did not fully
define even to Marjorie West.

"Now, I'm through," she exclaimed, closing the book as an exclamation
point; "but I won't bother you with what I have learned. Master McCosh
knows the face of the sky as well as I know the alphabet. You should have
heard him and seen him one night, pointing here and there and everywhere:
That's Orion, that's Job's coffin, that's Cassiopeia! As fast as he could
speak. That's the Dipper, that's the North Star!"

"I know them all," said Morris.

"Why! when did you see them?"

"In my watches I've plenty of time to look at the stars! I've plenty of
time for thinking!"

"Have you seen an iceberg?"

"Yes, one floated down pretty near us going out--the air was chillier and
we found her glittering majesty was the cause of it."

"Have you seen a whale?"

"I've seen black fish; they spout like whales."

"And a nautilus."

"Yes."