"
To do Mr. Meeke justice, he had a heart, though it was a very
small one. He shook hands with me, and said he accepted my advice
as the advice of a friend, and so went back to his parsonage to
write the letter. In half an hour I called for it on horseback,
but it was not ready for me. Mr. Meeke was ridiculously nice
about how he should express himself when he got a pen into his
hand. I found him with his desk littered with rough copies, in a
perfect agony about how to turn his phrases delicately enough in
referring to my mistress. Every minute being precious, I hurried
him as much as I could, without standing on any ceremony. It took
half an hour more, with all my efforts, before he could make up
his mind that the letter would do. I started off with it at a
gallop, and never drew rein till I got to the sea-port town.
The harbor-clock chimed the quarter past eleven as I rode by it,
and when I got down to the jetty there was no yacht to be seen.
She had been cast off from her moorings ten minutes before
eleven, and as the clock struck she had sailed out of the harbor.
I would have followed in a boat, but it was a fine starlight
night, with a fresh wind blowing, and the sailors on the pier
laughed at me when I spoke of rowing after a schooner yacht which
had got a quarter of an hour's start of us, with the wind abeam
and the tide in her favor.
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