a quality of manliness in her which pleased me much
then and more thereafter. There is a play I have seen acted in which a
girl goes to live in a wood in a man's habit. I have thought since that
she of the play must have showed like this girl, and indeed I speak but
what I know when I say that man's apparel became her bravely. Now, as
she came down the stairs she was clad in some kind of flowered gown of
blue and white which set off her fair loveliness divinely. She carried
some yellow flowers at her girdle; they were Lent lilies, as I believe.

This apparition distracting my attention from the Captain's words, he
wheeled round upon his heel and learnt the cause of my inattention.
Immediately he smiled and called to the maiden.

'Come here, niece; I have found you a new friend.'

She came forward, smiling to him, and then looked at me with an
expression of the sweetest gravity in the world. Surely there never was
such a girl in the world since the sun first shone on maidens.

'Lass,' said the Captain, 'this is our new friend. His name is Raphael
Crowninshield, but, because I think he has more of the man in him than
of the archangel, I mean to call him Ralph.'

The girl held out her hand to me in a way that reminded me much of
Lancelot.

As I took her hand I felt that my face was flaming like the sun in a
sea-fog--no less round and no less red. I was timid with girls, for I
knew but few, and after my misfortune I had shunned those few most
carefully. She was not shy herself, though, and she did not seem to note
my shyness--or, if she did, it gave her no pleasure to note it, as it
would have given many less gracious maidens. Her hand was not very
small, but it was finely fashioned--a noble hand, like my Captain's and
like Lancelot's; a hand that gave a true grasp; a hand that it was a
pleasure to hold.

'Shall I call you Ralph or Raphael?' she said.

My face grew hotter, and I stammered foolishly as I answered her that I
begged she would call me by what name she pleased, but that if it
pleased my Captain to call me Ralph, then Ralph I was ready to be.

'Well and good, Ralph,' she said.

We had parted hands by this time, but I was still staring at her, full
of wonder.

'This boy,' said the Captain, 'goes with us in the Royal Christopher. We
will find our New World together. He is a good fellow, and should make a
good sailor in time.'

As the Captain spoke of me and the girl looked at me I felt hotter and
mo