one day what he was going to be.

"What, make a parson of him, brother-in-law!" exclaimed the sailor in
horrified accents. "You'd never spoil such a boy as that, who's cut out
for a sailor, every inch of him--not, of course, that I wish to say a
word against your profession. Still, he can't go into the church yet;
what are you going to do with him in the meantime, eh?"

"Send him to school," replied the other.

"Why, hasn't he been yet?"

"Oh, yes, he's not altogether ignorant," said the vicar. "I think he's
a very fair scholar for his years."

"Then why dose him any more with book learning, eh? When you fill a
water-cask too full it's apt to run over!"

"I quite agree with you about cramming, Jack," said the vicar, smiling
at the nautical simile; "but, I'm sending Teddy to a leading school more
for the sake of the discipline than for anything more that I want him to
learn at present."

"Discipline, eh! is that your reason, brother-in-law? Then allow me to
tell you he'll get more of that at sea than he ever will at school."

"Oh, father!" interrupted Teddy, who had been present all the time
during the confab, listening as gravely as any judge to the discussion
about his future, "do let me be a sailor! I'd rather go to sea than
anything."

"But you might be drowned, my boy," said the vicar gravely, his thoughts
wandering to every possible danger of the deep.

"No fear of that," answered Teddy smiling. "Why, I can swim like a
fish; and there's Uncle Jack now, whom you all thought lost, safe and
sound after all his voyages!"

"Aye and so I am!" chorused the individual alluded to.

"Well, well, we'll think of it," said the vicar. "I'll hear what my old
friend Jolly has to say to the plan first."

But he could not have consulted a more favourable authority as far as
Teddy was concerned.

"The very thing for him!" said the doctor approvingly. "I don't think
you could ever turn him into a parson, Vernon. He has too much animal
spirits for that; think of my gig, ho! ho!"

Overcome by the many arguments brought forward, and the general
consensus of judgment in favour of the project, the vicar at last
consented that Teddy might be allowed to go to sea under the aegis of
Uncle Jack, who started off at once to London to see about the shipping
arrangements; when the rest of the household set to work preparing the
young sailor's outfit in the meantime, so that no time might be lost--
little Cissy making h