“Hoots,” says he, again, “dinna ye thank me.  ’Tis naething to scuttle a nest of vermin, but the duty of ilka man who sails the seas.”  By this, having got the better of his emotion, he added:  “And if it has been my good fortune to save a gentleman, Mr. Carvel, I thank God for it, as you must.”

Save for a slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir’s clothes fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain’s cabin rigged out in the mate’s shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled shoes that came high over the instep, with my hair combed clear and tied with a ribbon behind.  I felt at last that I might lay some claim to respectability.  And what was my surprise to find Captain Paul buried to his middle in a great chest, and the place strewn about with laced and broidered coats and waistcoats, frocks and Newmarkets, like any tailor’s shop in Church Street.  So strange they looked in those tropical seas that he was near to catching me in a laugh as he straightened up.  ’Twas then I noted that he was a younger man than I had taken him for.

“You gentlemen from the southern colonies are too well nourished, by far,” says he; “you are apt to be large of chest and limb.  ’Odds bods, Mr. Carvel, it grieves me to see you apparelled like a barber surgeon.  If the good Lord had but made you smaller, now,” and he sighed, “how well this skyblue frock had set you off.”

“Indeed, I am content, and more, captain,” I replied with a smile, “and thankful to be safe amongst friends.  Never, I assure you, have I had less desire for finery.”

“Ay,” said he, “you may well say that, you who have worn silk all your life, and will the rest of it, and we get safe to port.  But believe me, sir, the pleasure of seeing one of your face and figure in such a coat as that would not be a small one.”

And disregarding my blushes and protests, he held up the watchet blue frock against me, and it was near fitting me but for my breadth,—­the skirts being prodigiously long.  I wondered mightily what tailor had thrust this garment upon him; its fashion was of the old king’s time, the cuffs slashed like a sea-officer’s uniform, and the shoulders made carefully round.  But other thoughts were running within me then.

“Captain,” I cut in, “you are sailing eastward.”

“Yes, yes,” he answered absently, fingering some Point d’Espagne.

“There is no chance of touching in the colonies?” I persisted.

“Colonies!  No,” said he, in the same abstraction; “I am making for the Solway, being long overdue.  But what think you of this, Mr. Carvel?”

And he held up a wondrous vellum-hole waistcoat of a gone-by vintage, and I saw how futile it were to attempt to lead him, while in that state of absorption, to topics which touched my affair.  Of a sudden the significance of what he had said crept over me, the word Solway repeating itself in my mind.  That firth bordered England itself, and Dorothy was in London!  I became reconciled.  I had no particle of objection to the Solway save the uneasiness my grandfather would come through, which was beyond helping.  Fate had ordered things well.