"she ain't up to my own—the old schooner. Else I'd swap back with Follansbee."
Having dispatched his letter to Wood and Guthrie, he hardly ate or slept for impatience.
"You and Zwinglius Turner," Joyce chided him, "are bad as children before Christmas. Now finish breakfast. Letters can wait."
At last the answer came, and the captain was singing as he brought it home. A cargo ready in ten days, promised the firm; they wrote kindly, offered their old friend terms better than he had hoped. Laughing, planning like a boy for his first voyage, the captain packed his old canvas bag. His deep chant filled the house:—
"'As they was walkin' on the green,
Bow down, bow down,
As they was walkin' on the green,
The bow is bent to me.
As they was walkin' on the green
To see their father's ships come in.' …
"Joyce, there's mittens you wanted to mend— By gorry, don't seem real, does it? No, sir, like a dream:—
