n opportunity
of proving his gratitude by rendering me some service which I might
remember, on my side, to the end of my days.

I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations by
persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject for a
joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening Pesca's
overwhelming sense of obligation to me. Little did I think
then--little did I think afterwards when our pleasant holiday had drawn
to an end--that the opportunity of serving me for which my grateful
companion so ardently longed was soon to come; that he was eagerly to
seize it on the instant; and that by so doing he was to turn the whole
current of my existence into a new channel, and to alter me to myself
almost past recognition.

Yet so it was. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay
under water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability never
have been connected with the story which these pages will relate--I
should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has
lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies,
who has become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose
of my life.

III

Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each other
at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to inform me that
something extraordinary had happened. It was quite useless, however,
to ask him for an immediate explanation. I could only conjecture,
while he was dragging me in by both hands, that (knowing my habits) he
had come to the cottage to make sure of meeting me that night, and that
he had some news to tell of an unusually agreeable kind.

We both bounced into the parlour in a highly abrupt and undignified
manner. My mother sat by the open window laughing and fanning herself.
Pesca was one of her especial favourites and his wildest eccentricities
were always pardonable in her eyes. Poor dear soul! from the first
moment when she found out that the little Professor was deeply and
gratefully attached to her son, she opened her heart to him
unreservedly, and took all his puzzling foreign peculiarities for
granted, without so much as attempting to understand any one of them.

My sister Sarah, with all the advantages of youth, was, strangely
enough, less pliable. She did full justice to Pesca's excellent
qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my
mother accepted him, for my sake.