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Raynor was relieved at your non-arrival; and as she knew I wished to join you as soon as possible, she invited me to sail with them to a little town on the coast, I forget its name, from which I could reach the railroad much quicker than from Sanpritchit." "She did not object, then," said I, "to your being on the yacht with her daughter?"
And with this he picked up his basket and went into the house. I was not discouraged, however, and when the captain came out I proposed to him that he should take me to Sanpritchit the next day. "No, sir," said he. "I never have sailed my grocery boat on Sunday, and I don't feel like beginnin'."
"Oh, that's by water," said the driver; "but this road's got to go around the end of the bay, and after that 'way round the top of the big marsh, and that makes it a good seventeen miles to Sanpritchit. Half past nine! Why, the boss told me, if I didn't get there before twelve, I must stop somewhere and water the mare and give her some oats. I've got a bag of them back there." I sat dumb.
Captain Jabez did not return until late that Saturday evening; but as soon as he set foot on shore I went to him and asked him if he could, in any way, get us to Sanpritchit that night, offering to pay him liberally for the service. "I've got a sailboat," said he, "and ye'd be right welcome to it if it was here; but it ain't here.
I went ashore, and waited there with great impatience until early in the afternoon, when a boy arrived, who said he had started to bring you to Sanpritchit, but that you had changed your mind, and he had conveyed you to a railroad station, where you had taken a western-bound train. "I went to the yacht to report. I think Mrs.
They will have to lay up at Sanpritchit all day to-morrow; and it seems to me it would have been a great deal pleasanter for them to stay here Sunday, and to have started on Monday. There's no church at Sanpritchit, or anything for them to do, so far as I know, unless Miss Raynor reads sermons to them, which she never did here, though she's a religious sister, which perhaps you didn't know, sir."
Almost any horse could take me eight miles in an hour and a half, even with poor roads, and, from what I knew of the industrial methods of this part of the country, I did not believe that the necessary supplies would be put on the yacht before half past nine: therefore, I did not allow myself to doubt that I should reach Sanpritchit in time to see Mrs. Raynor.
The mare was a very deliberate traveler, and the boy who sat beside me was an easily satisfied driver. "We must go faster than this," said I, after we had reached what appeared to be a highroad, "or I shall not get to Sanpritchit in time to attend to my business there." "Ye can't drive a hoss too fast when ye first set out," answered the boy. "Ye'll hurt a hoss if ye do that.
"Captain Jabez," said I, "as there seems to be no other way for me to do this thing, I will pay you whatever you may think the service worth, if you will take me to Sanpritchit in your grocery boat, and start immediately. It will be slow work traveling, I know, but I think we can surely get there before morning."
A good deal depends on whether it's uphill or downhill." "Well," said I, taking out my watch, "we must keep her up to six miles an hour, at least, and then we shall do the eight miles by half past nine, with something to spare." "Eight miles!" repeated the boy. "Eight miles to where?" "Sanpritchit," replied I. "That's what they told me."
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