A moment of silence followed, then Captain Raymond spoke in gentle, sympathetic tones.

“I am sorry, very sorry to disappoint you, my young friend; but I cannot grant your request.  Lucilla is but a child yet—­a mere school-girl; and such I intend to keep her for some six years or more to come.  I have no objection to you more than to any other man, but cannot consent to allowing her to be approached on that subject until she reaches much more mature years.”

“And in the meantime somebody else will in all probability get ahead of me,” sighed Percy.  “Oh, sir, can I not persuade you to revoke that decision and let me at least learn from her own lips whether or not she cares for me?”

“I think I can furnish all the information you wish in that line,” returned the captain, laying a kindly hand on the young man’s shoulder, “for hardly an hour ago she told me—­as she has many times before—­that she loved no one else in the wide world half so dearly as her father.”

“Well, sir, I am glad of it, since you won’t let me speak yet,” said Percy with a rueful sort of smile.  “But—­please don’t blame me for it—­but I can’t feel satisfied to be forbidden to speak a word, considering how very far apart our homes are, and that we may not meet again for years—­if ever—­and that—­Chester Dinsmore, who is, I can see plainly enough, over head and ears in love with her—­will be near her all the time and have every chance to cut me out.”

“No,” said the captain, “I shall give him no chance either.  I fully intend keeping my little girl to myself—­as I have already told you—­for at least six or eight years to come.”

“And you have no objection to me personally, sir?”

“None whatever; in fact, from all I have seen and heard I am inclined to think you a fine fellow; almost equal to my own boy, Max,” Captain Raymond said with a smile:  “and if my daughter were of the right age, and quite ready and willing to leave her father, I should have but one objection to your suit—­that you would take her so far away from me.”

“Possibly I might not, sir, should there be an opening for me near where you reside.  I think the Bible says it is the man who is to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife.”

“True, my young friend,” returned the captain; “but the time I have set is too far away to make it worth our while to consider that question at present.”

With that the interview closed, and the two parted, the captain to be confronted a few minutes later by Chester Dinsmore, with a like request to that just denied to Percy.

“No, no, Chester,” he said, “it is not to be thought of; Lucilla is entirely too young to leave her father’s fostering care and take up the duties and trials of married life.  I cannot consent to your saying a word to her on the subject for years to come.”

“You have no objection to me personally, I trust, sir?” returned the young man, looking chagrined and mortified.