her
paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness.
They met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which was authenticated
by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look
forward rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the
poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there
was no harm in him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable,
incredulous emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the
least vulgarly; his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had
a sort of distinction--the more so that when he talked to her he looked
with a steadier and more intelligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright,
capable man, with a white beard. You did not think of his age. His son,
he affirmed, had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood.

Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he declared. Proper age to get
married with a nice, sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. He
was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited husbands were the easiest
to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter
wouldn't melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a woman thoroughly
miserable. And there was nothing like a home--a fireside--a good roof:
no turning out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh, my dear?"

Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors that pursue their calling
within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he
had been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, and had remained
on the coast all his sea life. It must have been a hard one at first:
he had never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its
innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides.
Many sailors feel and profess a rational dislike for the sea, but his
was a profound and emotional animosity--as if the love of the stabler
element had been bred into him through many generations.

"People did not know what they let their boys in for when they let them
go to sea," he expounded to Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at
once." He did not believe you ever got used to it. The weariness of such
a life got worse as you got older. What sort of trade was it in which
more than half your time you did not put your foot inside your house?
Directly you got out to sea you had no means of knowing what went on
at home. One might have thought him weary of distant voyages