suddenly; "that will be the thing of all others. We will ask my cousin
Minnie; she is full of fun and life, and will make a charming wife for
Tom!"

James Grantham laughed.

"What schemers you all are, Fanny! Now I should call it downright
treachery to take anyone on board the _Seabird_ with the idea of
capturing its master."

"Nonsense, treachery!" Mrs. Grantham said indignantly; "Minnie is the
nicest girl I know, and it would do Tom a world of good to have a wife
to look after him. Why, he is thirty now, and will be settling down
into a confirmed old bachelor before long. It's the greatest kindness we
could do him, to take Minnie on board; and I am sure he is the sort of
man any girl might fall in love with when she gets to know him. The fact
is, he's shy! He never had any sisters, and spends all his time in
winter at that horrid club; so that really he has never had any women's
society, and even with us he will never come unless he knows we are
alone. I call it a great pity, for I don't know a pleasanter fellow than
he is. I think it will be doing him a real service in asking Minnie; so
that's settled. I will sit down and write him a note."

"In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose," was Tom Virtue's comment
when he received Mrs. Grantham's letter, thanking him warmly for the
invitation, and saying that she would bring her cousin, Miss Graham,
with her, if that young lady was disengaged.

As a matter of self-defence he at once invited Jack Harvey, who was a
mutual friend of himself and Grantham, to be of the party.