"
"But you burnt it!" said Prudence, with an astonished laugh.
The captain started. "No; I was going to," he said, eyeing her in
manifest confusion.
"But you said that you had," persisted his niece.
"Yes," stammered the captain, "I know I did, but I hadn't. I was just
looking ahead a bit, that was all. I went to the bureau just now to do
it."
Miss Drewitt eyed him with mild reproach. "You even described how you
did it," she said, slowly. "You said that Mount Lonesome turned into a
volcano. Wasn't it true?"
"Figure o' speech, my dear," said the unhappy captain; "I've got a
talent for description that runs away with me at times."
His niece gazed at him in perplexity.
"You know what Chalk is," said Captain Bowers, appealingly. "I was going
to do it yesterday, only I forgot it, and he would have gone down on his
knees for another sight of it. I don't like to seem disobliging to
friends, and it seemed to me a good way out of it. Chalk is so eager--
it's like refusing a child, and I hurt his feelings only the other day."
"Perhaps you burnt it after all and forgot it?" said Prudence.
For the first time in her knowledge of him the captain got irritable with
her.
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