The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or the Real Robinson Crusoe by Joseph Xavier Saintine
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page 12 of 144 (08%)
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intentions to treat at his own expense the whole company and even the
whole town, if the town would do him the honor to drink with him. Catherine at once took him into favor. When she heard him praise his friend and companion, the brave Captain Stradling, she felt for the latter, not an emotion of tenderness, but a sentiment of respect and even of good-will. Dampier, excited by his audience, did not fail, like other conquerors by land and sea, to recount some of his great deeds. Among others, he recapitulated a certain affair in which he and his friend Stradling had captured a Spanish galleon, laden with piastres. From this moment the beautiful Kitty became more thoughtful, and began to see that the scar was becoming to the face of this good captain. After drinking, when Dampier, still escorted by his _fidus Achates_, came to settle his account with the hostess, he chucked her familiarly under the chin, as was his custom with landladies in the four quarters of the globe. From any one else, the proud Catherine would not have suffered such a liberty; to this, she replied only by a graceful reverence, and, while the hero and paymaster of the _fĂȘte_ shook a rouleau of gold upon her counter, she said, hastily bending towards Stradling: 'To-morrow!' accompanying this word with an expressive look and her most gracious smile. The enamored Stradling, always impassible, contented himself with replying: 'It is well!' The day following, the third, the important day, that which Catherine already regarded as her day of betrothal, early in the morning, she |
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