e
as good as before after she is repaired; but if she should not be so,
sell her at once for what you can get for her and order a new one, I
will pay the difference. In any case I consider I owe you a boat.
Whether it is five years hence or ten or fifteen, if I am alive and you
want another boat I give you authority to order one of the best that can
be built, and to tell them to send the bill in to me. I have not given
you anything for your nephew, for I have been talking to my wife, and
maybe we can serve him better in some other way."

Mrs. Godstone had indeed been in for a chat each day with Jack's mother,
and had told her husband that she felt sure neither Mrs. Robson nor Jack
would like an offer of money.

"The lad is very intelligent," she said, "and he and his mother are of
quite a different class to the fisher people here. His father was a
gentleman, and she has the manners of a lady. I should like for us to do
the boy some permanent good, William."

"Well, we will see about it, my dear," her husband had said. "As soon as
I am well enough to talk to him I will find out what his own wishes in
the matter are."

Jack was therefore sent for after his uncle had left the inn.

"Well, my lad," Mr. Godstone said as he entered, "I am glad to see you
at last and to thank you for what you did for us the other day. My wife
tells me that you do not like being thanked, and as deeds are better
than words we won't say much more about it. So I hear you have only been
living here about two years?"

"That is all, sir; we lived at Dulwich before."

"So I hear. And your father was an artist? Have you any taste that way?"

Jack shook his head. "No, sir; I never thought of being an artist. I
always wanted to go to sea."

"To go to sea--eh?" Mr. Godstone repeated, "Well, then, you have got
your wish."

"Oh, I do not call this going to sea," Jack said contemptuously. "I
mean, I wanted to be a sailor--not a fisherman."

"And why didn't you go then, lad?"

"Well, sir, in the first place mother did not know anyone who had to do
with ships; and then her friends were all here, and she knew the place
and its ways, and she thought that by buying a bawley, as she has done,
in time I should come to sail her and earn my living as my uncle does.
And then I don't think she would ever have agreed to my going to sea
right away from her; but I do not know about that."

"Well, lad, you see the case is changed now. I have to do with ship