ap, and when we come back she an' William'll
sing for you. She admires music," said Mrs. Todd, turning to speak to
her mother.

But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn't sing as she used, and
perhaps William wouldn't feel like it. She looked tired, the good old
soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful little house while
she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of pastures already in her
daughter's company. But it seemed best to go with Mrs. Todd, and off we
went.

Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from home, and a
small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight and slender from
her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew breathless, so that we
sat down to rest awhile on a convenient large stone among the bayberry.

"There, I wanted you to see this,--'tis mother's picture," said Mrs.
Todd; "'twas taken once when she was up to Portland soon after she
was married. That's me," she added, opening another worn case, and
displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked like still in
spite of being past sixty. "And here's William an' father together. I
take after father, large and heavy, an' William is like mother's folks,
short an' thin. He ought to have made something o' himself, bein' a man
an' so like mother; but though he's been very steady to work, an' kept
up the farm, an' done his fishin' too right along, he never had mother's
snap an' power o' seein' things just as they be. He's got excellent
judgment, too," meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at
any satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure in
life. "I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin' the most
of life just as it falls to hand," she said as she began to put the
daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my hand to see her mother's
once more, a most flowerlike face of a lovely young woman in quaint
dress. There was in the eyes a look of anticipation and joy, a far-off
look that sought the horizon; one often sees it in seafaring families,
inherited by girls and boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea,
and are always watching for distant sails or the first loom of the
land. At sea there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its
counterpart in a sailor's character, in the large and brave and patient
traits that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in
a seafarer.

When the family pictures were wrapped again in