'

"'No more I didn't think I should, missy; and I don't suppose I ever
should if I hadn't met you, though you won't understand that. However,
I've give up the stage, and have taken to the sea again.'

"'I'm glad of that, Joe,' the eldest said, 'and mamma will be glad
too.'

"'Why should mamma be glad, little one?' I asked.

"'Mamma will be glad,' she said positively. 'I know she will be glad
when I tells her.'

"We'd sat down by this time, and I began to talk to them about their
mamma. Mamma very good, very kind, very pretty, they both agreed; and
then they went on telling me about their home in London, and their
carriage and amusements. Presently they stopped, and I could see the
eldest wanted to say something particular, for she puckered up her
forehead as she always did when she was very serious; and then she
said, with her hands folded before her, almost as if she was saying a
lesson:

"'Mamma very happy woman. She's got two little girls and baby-brother,
and papa love her so much; but there's one thing keeps her from being
quite happy.'

"'Is there, missy?' I asked. 'She ought to be happy with all these
things. What is it?'

"'Mamma once had someone do a great thing for her. If it hadn't been
for him Nina and sissy and little baby-brother could never have been
born, and papa would never have had dear mamma to love; but it cost
the man who did it a great deal--all he cared for; and now he won't
let mamma and papa and us love him and help him; and it makes mamma
unhappy when she thinks of it.'

"Here she had evidently finished what she had heard her mamma say, for
her forehead got smooth again, and she began to fill my pockets with
sand.

"'It don't sound likely, missy, that doesn't,' I says. 'It don't stand
to reason nohow. You can't have understood what mamma said.'

"'Mamma said it over and over again, lots of time,' Nina said. 'Nina
quite sure she said right.'

"We didn't say no more about it then, though after the children had
gone I wondered to myself how a chap could go on so foolish as that.
Well, sir, three days after come round from Whitby this very boat, the
_Grateful Mary_. She was sent care of Joe Denton; and as that was me,
I had her hauled up on the beach till I should hear whose she was.
Several visitors that had been out with me had said, promiscuous like,
that they should like to have a boat of their own, and I supposed they
had bought her at Whitby and sent her down, though why th