in the chimney-corner, and crooned to him strange, wild African
legends of the things that she had seen in her childhood and early
days,--for she had been stolen when about fifteen years of age;
and these weird, dreamy talks increased the fervor of his roving
imagination, and his desire to explore the wonders of the wide and
unknown world. When rebuked or chastised, it was she who had secret
bowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to be
secretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that sent him
supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge of cake, had
conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his more conscientious
mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, these ministrations,
if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for two reasons: first,
that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindness to an erring boy,
which they are not responsible for; and second, that Candace was so set
in her ways and opinions that one might as well come in front of a ship
under full sail as endeavor to stop her in a matter where her heart was
engaged.

To be sure, she had her own private and special quarrels with "Massa
James" when he disputed any of her sovereign orders in the kitchen, and
would sometimes pursue him with uplifted rolling-pin and floury hands
when he had snatched a gingernut or cooky without suitable deference or
supplication, and would declare, roundly, that there "never was sich an
aggravatin' young un." But if, on the strength of this, any one
else ventured a reproof, Candace was immediately round on the other
side:--"Dat ar' chile gwin' to be spiled, 'cause dey's allers a-pickin'
on him;--he's well enough, on'y let him alone."

Well, under this miscellaneous assortment of influences,--through
the order and gravity and solemn monotone of life at home, with the
unceasing tick-tack of the clock forever resounding through clean,
empty-seeming rooms,--through the sea, ever shining, ever smiling,
dimpling, soliciting, like a magical charger who comes saddled and
bridled and offers to take you to fairyland,--through acquaintance with
all sorts of foreign, outlandish ragamuffins among the ships in the
harbor,--from disgust of slow-moving oxen, and long-drawn, endless
furrows round the fifteen-acre lot,--from misunderstandings with grave
elder brothers, and feeling somehow as if, he knew not why, he grieved
his mother all the time just by being what he was