y such things?" gasped Rachel, who, as
the time for the captain's departure approached, had been subsiding into
her old melancholy. "There's other things to think of in this vale of
tears."

"Are there? Well, if they're gloomy, I don't want to think of 'em. Jack,
my lad, I wish you were going to sail with me."

"So do I," said Jack.

"He's my only boy, captain," said Mrs. Harding. "I couldn't part with
him."

"I don't blame you, ma'am, not a particle; though there's the making of
a sailor in Jack."

"If he went away, he'd never come back," said Rachel, lugubriously.

"I don't know about that, ma'am. I've been a sailor, man and boy, forty
years, and here I am, well and hearty to-day."

"The captain is about your age, isn't he, Aunt Rachel?" said Jack,
maliciously.

"I'm only thirty-nine," said Rachel, sharply.

"Then I must have been under a mistake all my life," said the cooper to
himself. "Rachel's forty-seven, if she's a day."

This remark he prudently kept to himself, or a fit of hysterics would
probably have been the result.

"I wouldn't have taken you for a day over thirty-five, ma'am," said the
captain, gallantly.

Rachel actually smiled, but mildly disclaimed the compliment.

"If it hadn't been for my trials and troubles," she said, "I might have
looked younger; but they are only to be expected. It's the common lot."

"Is it?" said the captain. "I can't say I've been troubled much that
way. With a stout heart and a good conscience we ought to be jolly."

"Who of us has a good conscience?" asked Rachel, in a melancholy tone.

"I have, Aunt Rachel," answered Jack.

"You?" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You, that tied a tin kettle to a
dog's tail yesterday, and chased the poor cat till she almost died of
fright. I lie awake nights thinking of the bad end you're likely to come
to unless you change your ways."

Jack shrugged his shoulders, but the captain came to his help.

"Boys will be boys, ma'am," he said. "I was up to no end of tricks
myself when I was a boy."

"You weren't so bad as Jack, I know," said Rachel.

"Thank you for standing up for me, ma'am; but I'm afraid I was. I don't
think Jack's so very bad, for my part."

"I didn't play the tricks Aunt Rachel mentioned," said Jack. "It was
another boy in our block."

"You're all alike," said Rachel. "I don't know what you boys are all
coming to."

Presently the captain announced that he must go. Jack accompanied him as
far as the pi