"
Blodgett seemed pleased. "Thinks I, he's likely to, but it ain't fit I
should ask the captain."
Promising to present the plea as if it were my own, I sent Blodgett away
reassured, and eventually we all raised a sum that bought such a royal doll
as probably no merchant in Newburyport ever gave his small daughter, and
enough silk to make the little maid, when she should reach the age for it,
as handsome a gown as ever woman wore. Nor was that the end. The night
before we sailed from China, Blodgett came to me secretly, after a
mysterious absence, and pressed a small package into my hand.
"Don't tell," he said. "It's little enough. If we'd stopped off on some o'
them islands I might ha' done better. Thinks I last night, I'd like to send
her a bit of a gift all by myself as a kind of a keepsake, you know, sir,
seeing I never had a little lass o' my own. So I slips away from the others
and borrows a boat that was handy to the shore and drops down stream
quiet-like till I comes in sight of one of them temples where there's gongs
ringing and all manner of queer goings-on. Says I,--not aloud, you
understand,--'Here, my lad, 's the very place you're looking for, just
a-waiting for you!' So I sneaks up soft and easy,--it were a rare dark
night,--and looks in, and what do I see by the light o' them there crazy
lanterns? There was one o' them heathen idols! Yes, sir, a heathen idol as
handy as you please.
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