s no other
than the City that the blessed St. John saw descending from Heaven, so
fair was it to look on, but they cried out that it was rather a City of
Destruction, and when we had got out of the current where it was
bearing down on us, our noble captain piped all hands up to prayers,
and gave thanks for our happy deliverance therefrom."

Susan breathed a thanksgiving as her husband read, and he forbore to
tell her of the sharks, the tornadoes, and the fevers which might make
the tropical seas more perilous than the Arctic. No Elizabethan
mariner had any scruples respecting piracy, and so long as the captain
was a godly man who kept up strict discipline on board, Master Richard
held the quarterdeck to be a much more wholesome place than the
Manor-house, and much preferred the humours of the ship to those of any
other feminine creature; for, as to his Susan, he always declared that
she was the only woman who had none.

So she accepted his decision, and saw the wisdom of it, though her
tender heart deeply felt the disappointment. Tenderly she packed up
the shirts which she and Cis had finished, and bestrewed them with
lavender, which, as she said, while a tear dropped with the gray
blossoms, would bring the scent of home to the boy.

Cis affected to be indifferent and offended. Master Humfrey might do
as he chose. She did not care if he did prefer pitch and tar, and
whale blubber and grease, to hawks and hounds, and lords and ladies.
She was sure she wanted no more great lubberly lads--with a sly cut at
Diccon--to tangle her silk, and torment her to bait their hooks. She
was well quit of any one of them.

When Diccon proposed that she should write a letter to Humfrey, she
declared that she should do no such thing, since he had never attempted
to write to her. In truth Diccon may have made the proposal in order
to obtain a companion in misfortune, since Master Sniggius, emulous of
the success of other tutors, insisted on his writing to his brother in
Latin, and the unfortunate epistle of Ricardus to Onofredus was revised
and corrected to the last extremity, and as it was allowed to contain
no word unknown to Virgilius Maro, it could not have afforded much
delectation to the recipient.

But when Mrs. Susan had bestowed all the shirts as neatly as possible,
on returning to settle them for the last time before wrapping them up
for the messenger, she felt something hard among them. It was a tiny
parcel wrapped in