“I’ve some plans ahead for you, my boy,” said he one day with a knowing shake of the head; and Andrew’s innocent brain began to swim straightway between the new barque and the Sabrina.

“Look at him!” said Mr. Maurice to his wife one evening as Andrew walked in the garden with Miss Frarnie.  “My mind’s made up about him.  He’s the stuff for a sea-captain, afraid neither of wind nor weather nor the face of clay—­can sail a ship and choose her cargo.  He’s none of your coxcombs that go courting across the way:  he’s a man into the core of his heart, and as well bred as any gentleman that walks; though Goodness knows how he came by it.”

“These sea-coast people,” said his wife, reflectively (she was inland-born herself), “see the world and learn.”

“Well, what do you say to it?  I don’t find the flaw in him.  If Heaven had given me a son, I’d have had him be like this one; and since it didn’t, why here’s my way to circumvent Heaven.”

“Oh, my dear,” said the wife, “I can’t hear you talk so.  And besides—­”

“Well?  Besides what?”

“I think it is always best to let such things take their own course.  We did.”

“Of course we did,” laughed Mr. Maurice.  “But how about our fathers and mothers?”

“I mean,” said Mrs. Maurice, “not to force things.”

“And who intends to force them?  It’s plain enough the young fellow took a fancy to our Frarnie the first time he laid eyes on her, isn’t it?”

“I mean,” said Mrs. Maurice again, “that if Frarnie should have the same fancy for him, I don’t know that there’d be any objection.  He is quite uncommon—­quite uncommon when you consider all things—­but I don’t know why you want to lead her to like any one in particular, when she has such a nice home and is all we have.”

“Girls will marry, Mrs. Maurice.  If it isn’t one, it will be another.  So I had rather it should, be one, and that one of my own choosing—­one who, will use her well, and not make ducks and drakes of her money as soon as we are gone where there’s no returning, and without a ‘thank you’ for your pains.  Look at them now!  Should you imagine they thought there was any one else on earth but each other at this moment?  They’re fond of each other, that’s plain.  They’d be a remarkable-looking couple.  What do you think of it?”

“Frarnie might have that India shawl that I never undid, to appear out in,” said Mrs. Maurice, pensively, continuing her own reflections rather than directly replying.  “And I suppose we needn’t lose her really, for she could make her home with us.”

And so the conspiracy advanced, its simple victims undreaming of its approach—­Louie sighing faintly to think she saw so little of Andrew now, but content, since she was sure it was for his best interest to make the friendship of the Sabrina’s owner; Andrew fretting to see how all this necessary submission to superiors kept him from Louie, but more than half compensated with the dazzling visions that danced before his eyes of the Sabrina in her new rig—­of the barque coming down for her masts and sails from her launching.