I owe to you all that is dear to me in this
world, and our one unhappiness has been that you would not hear us,
that you had lost everything and would not let us do anything to
lighten your blow.'

"Still, sir, I couldn't make out what he meant, and began to think
that I was mad, or that he was. Then the lady stood up and threw back
her veil, and come up in front of me with the tears a-running down
her face; and I fell back a step, and sits down suddenly in a chair,
for, sure enough, it was that gal. Different to what I had seen her
last, healthy-looking and well--older, in course; a woman now, and the
mother of my little ladies.

"She stood before me, sir, with her hands out before her, pleading
like.

"'Don't hate me any more, Joe. Let my children stand between us. I
know what you have suffered, and, in all my happiness, the thought of
your loneliness has been a trouble, as my husband will tell you. I so
often thought of you--a broken, lonely man. I have talked to the
children of you till they loved the man that saved their mother's
life. I cannot give you what you have lost, Joe--no one can do that;
but you may make us happy in making you comfortable. At least, if you
cannot help hating me, let the love I know you bear my children weigh
with you.'

"As she spoke the children were hanging on me; and when she stopped
the little one said:

"'Oh, Joe, oo must be dood; oo mustn't hate mamma, and make her cry!'

"Well, sir, I know as I need tell you more about it. You can imagine
how I quite broke down, like a great baby, and called myself every
kind of name, saying only that I thought, and I a'most think so now,
that I had been somehow mad from the moment the squall struck the
_Kate_ till the time I first met the little girls.

"When I thought o' that, and how I'd cut that poor gal to her drowning
heart with my words, I could ha' knelt to her if she'd ha' let me. At
last, when I was quiet, she explained that this cottage and its
furniture and the _Grateful Mary_ was all for me; and we'd a great
fight over it, and I only gave in when at last she says that if I
didn't do as she wanted she'd never come down to Scarborough with the
little ladies no more; but that if I 'greed they'd come down regular
every year, and that the little girls should go out sailing with me
regular in the _Grateful Mary_.

"Well, sir, there was no arguing against that, was there? So here I
am; and next week I expect Miss Mary that was, wit