"I guess not. I've got older sisters at home. They hated to have me
leave. But I looked at it this way: If I was ever going to sea--and
I _was_--I couldn't get such another captain as Captain Jenness,
nor such another crew; all the men from down our way; and I don't mind
the second mate's jokes much. He doesn't mean anything by them; likes
to plague, that's all. He's a first-rate sailor."

Lydia was kneeling before one of the trunks, and the boy was stooping
over it, with a hand on either knee. She had drawn out her only black
silk dress, and was finding it rather crumpled. "I shouldn't have
thought it would have got so much jammed, coming fifty miles," she
soliloquized. "But they seemed to take a pleasure in seeing how much
they could bang the trunks." She rose to her feet and shook out the
dress, and drew the skirt several times over her left arm.

The boy's eyes glistened. "Goodness!" he said. "Just new, ain't it?
Going to wear it any on board?"

"Sundays, perhaps," answered Lydia thoughtfully, still smoothing and
shaping the dress, which she regarded at arm's-length, from time to
time, with her head aslant.

"I suppose it's the latest style?" pursued the boy.

"Yes, it is," said Lydia. "We sent to Boston for the pattern. I hate
to pack it into one of those drawers," she mused.

"You needn't," replied Thomas. "There's a whole row of hooks."