American was rich and fussy, and when booking his passage, had demanded to do so through the manager. “I want a suite amidships, sir, ’n I want tew travel in a ship that kin travel along, as I ain’t none too good a sailor. I want to sail with a skipper that’ll make her travel some. ’N bye-the-bye, I saw by a Boston paper that one of yewr skippers is related to Sir Alastair McKenzie. I leased the old boy’s castle for a while ’n a fine old bird he is. I’d like mighty fine tew cross the pond with this here McKenzie if he’s on a fast packet, but ain’t he on one of those twelve-day hookers to Boston?”

The manager had made up his mind. A man with McKenzie’s connections would bring lucrative business and be popular in the New York trade. The other masters in line for promotion would have to wait. “Captain McKenzie was in the Ansonia—one of our intermediate ships—but we have now placed him in command of our New York Express steamship Cardonia and we can fix you up splendidly in her.” The American booked passage, and McKenzie commanded the Cardonia.

With the promotion came a substantial increase in salary and Janet felt that her ambitions were realized—for a time at least. New worlds to conquer would suggest themselves bye-and-bye. The flat in the Terrace was given up, and a somewhat pretentious eight-roomed red sandstone villa in a suburban locality was rented, expensively decorated and furnished, and Mrs. McKenzie, with Donald Percival and a capable Highland “general,” moved in and laid plans for attaining the rank of first magnitude in the firmament of the local social stars.

CHAPTER THREE

Donald Percival McKenzie was eight years old when the red sandstone villa became his habitation. He was glad to leave the Terrace where they formerly lived as his life in that locality, as far as relations with lads of his own age were concerned, had been none too happy. The migration to Kensington Villa, as the red sandstone eight-roomer was called, was accompanied by a determined ultimatum from young McKenzie that his mother drop the name “Percival” altogether and call him “Donald” in future. As the ultimatum was presented with considerable howling and crying and threats of atrocious behavior, the mother felt that she would have to make the concession.

With this bar to congenial juvenile fraternization removed, Donald felt free to begin life on a new plane. The youthful residents of the suburb he now lived in were “superior.” They did not run around barefooted in summer, nor wear “tackety” or hobnailed boots in winter. Not that Donald scorned either of these pedal comforts. Bare feet were fine and cool and “tackety” boots gave a fellow a grand feeling of heftiness in clumping around the house, in kicking tin cans, and in scuffling up sparks through friction with granolithic sidewalks. Though superior in mode of living and dress compared with the less favored lads of Donald’s former habitation, yet his new chums were very much akin to the latter in their scorn and hatred for anything savoring of “English,” and Donald hadn’t been in the neighborhood two days before he had to prove his citizenship in fistic combat with a youthful Doubting Thomas.

The other lad was bigger and older than Donald and had the name of being a fighter. He gave young McKenzie a severe drubbing and the latter had to go home with his clothes torn and his nose bleeding. The mother was furious and intended to see the other boy’s parents about it, but Donald wouldn’t allow her to do so. Instead, he remained home for an hour or two, changed into a garb less likely to spoil or hinder the free swing of his arms, and then slipped out to have another try at defending his name. Once again, Donald, in pugilistic parlance, “went to the mat for the count,” but in rising he announced his intention of coming back at his fistic partner later—“after I take boxing lessons an’ get my muscle up.” Donald’s determination, and possibly the threat, had considerable effect upon Jamie Sampson, who immediately made conciliatory advances. “I don’t want tae hit ye any more,” he said. “Ye’re a wee fella’—”

“Am I Scotch?” queried Donald aggressively.

“Shair, ye’re Scoatch!” Jamie admitted heartily—adding, “And I’ll punch any fella’s noase that says ye’re no. Let me brush ye doon, Donal’!”

Through the exertion of the “fecht” Donald caught a cold and was laid up for two weeks, but he felt that it was worth it as he had gained the friendship of Jamie Sampson—“the best fighter on the Road, mamma, and you should see how he can dunt a ba’ with his heid!” Donald’s description of Jamie’s prowess in using his skull for propelling a foot-ball caused Mrs. McKenzie some pain at the language used, and to her husband she said, “Donald must go to school soon, but we must send him to a place where he will learn to talk nicely. I think we’ll send him to Miss Watson’s private school. She’s English and very particular.”

Captain McKenzie looked thoughtfully at his son and sighed. “He’s not very strong,” he murmured, “but he’s got spirit if he hasn’t got stamina. Fancy him going for that big lad again after getting a licking! Aye, aye, Janet, he’s a hot-house plant, but maybe he’ll grow out of it if we’re careful.”

Petted and coddled by both parents; seldom rebuked or disciplined, young Donald was inclined to be “babyish” and somewhat arbitrary. He was a rather delicate child—a not unusual exception to the law of eugenics where both parents were ruggedly healthy—and his frequent sicknesses kept him much at home and in the society of his mother. He was clever beyond his years and had mastered “A, B, C’s” and “pot-hooks and hangers” prior to his fifth birthday, while at seven, he could read and write in a manner superior to most thick-skulled Scotch youngsters of ten. He showed surprising evidences of artistic talent at an early age, and the blank cover pages and flyleaves of most of the books in the McKenzie library were adorned with pencil drawings of railway locomotives and ships—mostly ships. Captain McKenzie seldom arrived home from a voyage but what he had to pass critical comment upon his son’s artistic conceptions of the Cardonia ploughing the seas in every manner of weather imaginable. There would be the Cardonia driving through a veritable cordillera of cresting combers—billows which caused the Captain to shudder involuntarily and declare that they were so wonderfully realistic that “he could feel the sprays running down his neck when he looked at them!” The Cardonia would again be presented in odious comparison with a rival company’s ship, and the latter was always dwarfed in size and far astern. In Donald’s eyes, the Cardonia was superior to anything afloat—even the crack Liverpool greyhounds of the day were mere tug-boats compared to her.

Occasionally other ship-masters would accompany Captain McKenzie home to dinner when his ship was in port, and these were red-letter days for Donald. After dinner, the seafarers would retire to the drawing-room and, with pipes or cigars alight and seated before the grate fire, the talk would inevitably drift to ships and shipping. With ears open and drinking in the