"Aye, true; well, it's strange, now I can never recollect your age without looking into the bible there. I recollect, now, it was so stormy that we did not dare to carry you to the meeting-house, and so Parson Fales christened you in this very room."
"I wish," said Charles, speaking with difficulty, "I wish, my dear sir, to make one more voyage round the Cape as soon as possible, and then I don't care if I never see a ship again."
"Well, that's strange enough; why, what have you seen in that part of the world so very enticing?"
"Enticing, indeed!" said the young man, springing from his chair, and hurrying across the room in agitation; "something that I must possess, or die!"
"Why, what a plague--why, what's got into the boy?" said the old gentleman, dashing down his pipe; "you haven't got be-devilled after those island girls, like a young fellow that I knew from Boston, who got so bewitched after the copper-skinned, amphibious jades, that his father was finally obliged to locate him there, as a sort of agent."
"O! no, no, no! she is as white as my own mother, well born, well educated, and a Protestant," said the son, hurrying his words upon each other; for he felt that the ice was broken, and saw the old gentleman's countenance lengthening fast; "oh, father, if you could but see her--if you but knew her--"
"Hum," quoth pa, "I dare say that sixty and twenty-five would agree to a charm on such a subject; but pray, how the deuce came this well born, well educated, white, protestant damsel in the Pacific, where the devil himself would never dream of looking for such a phenomenon?"
"If that's the case," said the senior Mr. Morton, "you had better step down cellar, and draw another mug of cider."
So saying, he replenished his pipe, and disposed himself in an attitude of calm resignation. As our readers are already acquainted with the history of the rise and progress of young Morton's love, we shall say no more of his narrative than that towards the close of it, his father was surprised out of his gravity, and ejaculated the word "d--nation!" with great emphasis, at the same time, flinging his pipe into the fire, and exclaiming by way of sermon to his short and pithy text,
"Why the d--l didn't you bring her with you, you foolish boy? Why, you have no more spunk than a hooked cod-fish! You'll never see her again, if you make fifty voyages round the cape; she's in a nunnery by this time, or, what is more likely, married to that Don What-d'ye-call-him."