as I afterwards found out for myself when I
sailed with him, being of a singularly modest and retiring disposition,
he abruptly asked, "This your son, eh?"

"Yes, sir--Cap'en Mordaunt, I means, sir," replied father. "I've got
one darter as is older; but he's my only son."

"How old is he now?"

"Fifteen years an' ten months," said father, after careful consideration
and much counting on his fingers. "He'll be sixteen next April, on
`Primrose Day,' as they call it."

"Another Tom Bowling, eh?"

"Yes, sir," said father. "He's `young Tom,' an' I'm the `old un' now!"

"Humph! He's a fine grown young chip for his age. What are you going
to make of him? He ought to be a sailor and serving the Queen by now,
like his father before him!"

Father `hummed' and `hawed,' not knowing what to answer to this; while I
burned all over with joy at having so potent an advocate coming to my
aid in this unexpected way.

Captain Mordaunt saw this: though anybody could have seen it from one
glance at my face; for if I grinned `like a Cheshire cat eating green
cheese' on ordinary occasions, as father used to say, why, I must have
looked now as if I had bolted all the cheese in one lump, and it had
stuck in my throat, keeping my mouth open on the stretch!

So, noticing this, father's old friend put the question to me point-
blank.

"I think, youngster, you've pretty well made up your mind already in the
matter, if I'm not very much mistaken," said he to me, as I unshipped my
oar and stood up in the bow of the wherry, ready to fend her off from
the pontoon as we ran up alongside, right under the stern of one of the
Ryde steamers that was just backing out from the railway pier above us.
"You'd like to go to sea, young Tom, I'm sure, eh?"

"There's nothing I should like better, sir," I answered glibly enough,
catching hold of one of the piles of the pier with my boathook and
bringing up the wherry easily to the landing-stage. "I only wish you'd
coax my father, sir, to let me be a sailor!"

"Now, Bowling, my old friend," said this new ally of mine, who, it
struck me, would turn out to be a very important factor in this decision
anent my future destiny, "the matter rests entirely with you. `Toby or
not Toby,' as Hamlet says in the play. Is your son, young Tom here, to
go to sea or not?"

Father took off his hat with his right hand and scratched his head
deliberately and deliberatively with his left, `humming' and `hawing'
o