learnt from that book was
an unconquerable love for travel and an unconquerable stretching to the
sea. When I read in my book of Sinbad and his Seven Voyages I would
think of the sea that lay so near me, and wish that I were waiting for a
wind in a boat with painted hull and sails like snow and my name
somewhere in great gold letters. I would wander down to the quays and
watch the shipping and the seamen, and wonder whence they came and
where they went, and if any one of them had a roc's egg on board. I was
very free for a child in those days, for my parents, still fretting on
my delicacy, rarely crossed me; and, indeed, I was tame enough, partly
from keeping such quiet, and well content to be by myself for the hour
together.

But, when I had lived in this wise until I was nearly fifteen, my father
and my mother agreed that I needed more book-learning; and, since they
were still loath to send me to school, they thought of Mr. Davies, the
bookseller, of Cliff Street. He was a man of learning. His business was
steady. He had leisure, and was never pressed for a penny, or even for a
guinea. It was agreed that I should go every day for a couple of
afternoon hours, to sit with him and ply my book, and become a famous
scholar. Poor Mr. Davies! he never got his will of me in that way, and
yet he bore me no grudge, though it filled him with disappointment at
first.

There was a vast deal of importance for me, though I did not dream it at
the time, about my going to take my lessons of Mr. Davies, of Cliff
Street. For if I had not gone I should never have got that tincture of
Latin which still clings to me, and which a world of winds and waters
has not blown or washed from my wits; nor, which is far more important,
should I ever have chanced upon Lancelot Amber; and if I had not chanced
upon Lancelot Amber I should have lost the best friend man ever had in
this world, and missed seeing the world's fairest woman.

CHAPTER II

LANCELOT AMBER

Mr. Davies was a wisp of a man, with a taste for snuff and for
snuff-coloured garments, and for books in snuffy bindings. His book-shop
in Cliff Street was a dingy place enough, with a smell of leather and
paste about it, and if you stirred a book you brought enough snuffy dust
into the air to make you sneeze for ten minutes. But his own room, which
was above the shop, was blithe enough, and it was there I had my
lessons. Mr. Davies kept a piping bullfinch in it, and a linnet, a