“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a prince in disguise, are you?”
“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that I'm trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that my grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”
“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave him took the sting out of her confession.
“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times. Sixteen big ships, and the last one was the Harvest Home, the China clipper that paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon swallowed her.”
“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of it?”
“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his money into railroads—and you know what has happened to most of the folks who have put their money into new railroads.”
“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”
“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over New England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out. Long before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did not allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always been used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”
Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of the knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you did!”
“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My father was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And I am happy now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather ought to have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”
“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs so much that a man must give her.”
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