Fritz and Eric | Page 3

so glad to welcome you back as I!"
"Think, mother," said Eric presently, after a moment's silence, in which the feelings of the two seemed too great to find expression in words of common import. "Why, by that time I will have nearly sailed round the world; for in my voyage to Java and back I will have to `double the Cape,' as sailors say!"
"Yes, that you will, my boy," chimed in his mother, anxious to sustain this buoyant change in his humour, and drive away the somewhat melancholy tone she had unwittingly introduced into their last parting conversation. "You'll be a regular little travelled monkey, like the one belonging to the Dutchman that we were reading about the other day which could do everything almost but speak, although I don't think anybody would accuse you of any want of ability on the latter score, you chatterbox!"
"No, no, little mother; I think not likewise," chuckled Eric complacently. "I'm not one of your silent ones, not so! But, hurrah!-- There comes Fritz turning in under the old gateway. He said he would try and get away for half an hour in the afternoon from the counting- house to wish me another good-bye and see me off, if Herr Grosschnapper could spare him. Ah ha, Master Fritz," shouted out the sailor lad, as his brother drew nigh, "you're just in time to see the last of me. I thought the worthy Herr would not let you come, you are so very late."
"Better late than never," said the other, smiling, coming up beside the pair, who were standing in front of one of the railway carriages, into which Eric had already bundled his bag. "The old man did growl a bit about my `idling away the afternoon,' as he called it; but when I impressed him with the fact that you were going away to sea, he relented and let me come, saying that it was a good job such a circumstance did not occur every day!"
"Much obliged to him, I'm sure!" said Eric, with that usual toss of his head which threw back his mane-like locks of yellow hair. "He would have been a fine old curmudgeon to have refused you leave to wish good- bye to your only brother!" And he put one of his arms round Fritz's neck as he spoke.
"Hush, my son," interposed Madame Dort. "You must not speak ill of the good merchant who has been such a kind friend to Fritz and given him regular employment in his warehouse!"
"All right, mutterchen, I won't mention again the name of the old cur--, I mean dear old gentleman, little mother, there!" And then catching the twinkling eye of Fritz, the two burst into a simultaneous laugh at the narrow escape there had been of his repeating the obnoxious epithet; while Madame Dort could not help smiling too, as she gazed fondly into the merry face of the roguish boy, standing by his brother's side and clinging to him with that deep fraternal affection which is so rarely seen, alas! in members of the same family.
Truly, they were sons of whom any mother might have been proud.
Fritz was tall and manly, by virtue of his two-and-twenty years and a small fringe of dark down that covered his upper lip; Eric was shorter by some inches, but more thick-set and with broader shoulders, predicting that he would be the bigger of the two as time rolled on.
The firstborn, Fritz, with his closely cropped hair and swarthy complexion, took after his dead father, who had been a Holsteiner--a mariner by profession, who had sailed his ship from the Elbe some years before for the last time, and left his wife to bring up her fatherless boys by the sweat of her brow and her own exertions; for Captain Dort had left but little worldly goods behind him, his all being embarked with himself in his ship, which was lost, with all hands on board, in the North Sea. Fritz and Eric had both been too young at the time to appreciate the struggles of their mother to support herself and them, until she had achieved a comfortable competency by teaching music and languages in several rich Hanoverian families; and now she had no longer to battle for her bread.
Eric took after her in face and expression, having the same light- coloured hair and bright blue eyes; but there the resemblance ceased, as hardly had he grown to boyhood than he evinced that desire for a sea life which he must have inherited with his father's blood--he would, he must be a sailor!
Being the youngest, he naturally was her pet; and thus, although the recollection of her husband's fate was ever before her, and Madame Dort had a dread of the sea which only