good sea-air and a v'y'ge would do Rose," and how "comfortable they
both would be on board the Molly Swash."

"I honour and respect, Mrs. Budd, as my captain's lady, you see, Mr.
Mulford, and intend to treat her accordin'ly. She knows it--and Rose
knows it--and they both declare they'd rather sail with me, since
sail they must, than with any other ship-master out of America."

"You sailed once with Capt. Budd yourself, I think I have heard you
say, sir?"

"The old fellow brought me up. I was with him from my tenth to my
twentieth year, and then broke adrift to see fashions. We all do
that, you know, Mr. Mulford, when we are young and ambitious, and my
turn came as well as another's."

"Capt. Budd must have been a good deal older than his wife, sir, if
you sailed with him when a boy," Mulford observed a little drily.

"Yes; I own to forty-eight, though no one would think me more than
five or six-and-thirty, to look at me. There was a great difference
between old Dick Budd and his wife, as you say, he being about
fifty, when he married, and she less than twenty. Fifty is a good
age for matrimony, in a man, Mulford; as is twenty in a young
woman."

"Rose Budd is not yet nineteen, I have heard her say," returned the
mate, with emphasis.

"Youngish, I will own, but that's a fault a liberal-minded man can