I suppose these ladies would have been miserable on such an
old schooner as ours,--and some of the men, too, who looked almost as
effeminate. I think Clarendon himself would very much prefer one of
these nice little state-rooms, where he could make his toilet so
comfortably, to his straw-bed in the old Go-Ahead. I am sure a dinner on
board the steamer would be much more to his taste than biscuit and
water, even with such nice fish as we caught this morning for a relish.
He pulled up a whole barrel full of them himself, and that gave him a
most excellent appetite.
At first, Clarendon declared that he could not go on board the steamer
in his sailor rigging; but he had no other with him, and at length the
desire to see what he called "civilized people" once more carried him
over. You should have seen some pretty ladies, who were sitting in the
dining-room, stare at him.
"That is a remarkably genteel-looking man for one in his condition,"
remarked the oldest of the group. "What kind of a vessel did he come
from?"
"I heard one of the gentlemen say, as it approached us, that it was a
Yankee fishing-smack," observed her daughter.
"He walks about as if he had been quite used to elegance," observed a
third, "and does not stare around like that plump little fellow beside
him, who is too fair to have been long on the water."
You may be sure that "the plump little fellow who stared about" was your
cousin Pidgie, for David never looks astonished at any thing, and has so
often visited all kinds of vessels that he is quite at home in any of
them.
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