“I thank you, Mr. Fox.  But I cannot accept your kindness.”

“Slife!” said Fox, “you refuse?  And you know what you are doing?”

“I know usually, sir.”

Comyn swore.  My exclamation had something of relief in it.

“Captain,” I said, “I felt that I could not stand in the way of this.  It has been my hope that you will come with me, and I have sent this morning after a cabin on the Virginia.  You must know that Mr. Fox’s offer is his own, and Lord Comyn’s.”

“I know it well, Richard.  I have not lived these three months with you for nothing.”  His voice seemed to fail him.  He drew near me and took my hand.  “But did you think I would require of you the sacrifice of leaving London now?”

“It is my pleasure as well as my duty, captain.”

“No,” he said, “I am not like that.  Yesterday I went to the city to see a shipowner whose acquaintance I made when he was a master in the West India trade.  He has had some reason to know that I can handle a ship.  Never mind what.  And he has given me the bark ‘Betsy’, whose former master is lately dead of the small-pox.  Richard, I sail to-morrow.”

In Dorothy’s coach to Whitehall Stairs, by the grim old palace out of whose window Charles the Martyr had walked to his death.  For Dorothy had vowed it was her pleasure to see John Paul off, and who could stand in her way?  Surely not Mr. Marmaduke! and Mrs. Manners laughingly acquiesced.  Our spirits were such that we might have been some honest mercer’s apprentice and his sweetheart away for an outing.

“If we should take a wherry, Richard,” said Dolly, “who would know of it?  I have longed to be in a wherry ever since I came to London.”

The river was smiling as she tripped gayly down to the water, and the red-coated watermen were smiling, too, and nudging one another.  But little cared we!  Dolly in holiday humour stopped for naught.  “Boat, your honour!  Boat, boat!  To Rotherhithe—­Redriff?  Two and six apiece, sir.”  For that intricate puzzle called human nature was solved out of hand by the Thames watermen.  Here was a young gentleman who never heard of the Lord Mayor’s scale of charges.  And what was a shilling to such as he!  Intricate puzzle, indeed!  Any booby might have read upon the young man’s face that secret which is written for all,—­high and low, rich and poor alike.

My new lace handkerchief was down upon the seat, lest Dolly soil her bright pink lutestring.  She should have worn nothing else but the hue of roses.  How the bargemen stared, and the passengers craned their necks, and the longshoremen stopped their work as we shot past them!  On her account a barrister on the Temple Stairs was near to letting fall his bag in the water.  A lady in a wherry!  Where were the whims of the quality to lead them next?  Past the tall water-tower and York Stairs, the idlers under the straight row of trees leaning over the high river wall; past Adelphi Terrace, where the great Garrick