THEY EMBARK UPON A CRIME

Varney was wrong in one thing: Mr. Carstairs's _Cypriani_ was not ready
to start anywhere at half a day's notice. For that reason it did not
start for Hunston on the following afternoon. As always happens, the
preparations for the little expedition took four times as long as
anybody would have thought possible.

For these delays no blame could be attached to Peter Maginnis. He had no
getting ready to do beyond bidding his father's man to pack him for a
week, and obtaining from his hatter's, at an out-of-season cut-price, an
immense and peculiar Panama with an offensive plaid band. Possibly it
was the only hat of its kind in the world. One might picture the
manufacturer as having it made up as an experiment, becoming morose when
he looked at it, and ordering his superintendent to make no more like it
at the peril of his life.

Peter, however, was delighted with it. Gazing at himself with smirking
satisfaction in the hat-shop mirror, he ordered the old one sent home
and was all ready to go to Hunston and kidnap Mary Carstairs.

But other preparations could not be completed with such speedy
satisfaction. The yacht had to coal, take on supplies, and pick up two
or three extra men for the crew. A Sunday came in and threw everything
back a day. Lastly the sailing-master's wife, whom Mr. Carstairs was
sending along to take charge of Mary on the homeward trip, chanced to be
down with an influenza.