“I am Mrs. Hardres: is it too late? We have been waiting in Portsmouth since the beginning of the storm, and this is the first day we have been able to get a boat to bring us off.”
“My missing midshipman,” he cried gaily. “Madam, it is never too late to get a good officer; but where is he?”
“Will!” called his mother. But there was no Will to be found. The Admiral, with the smile for which any man in his fleet was ready to die, flew to the door of the state-room in front of Mrs. Hardres. She knew where to look for her son. He was standing just outside the door in his new midshipman’s rig. His oilskins were lying folded in a neat pile on the deck beside him, though it had come on to rain in torrents.
“Come in, Will,” said the Admiral, in his best-pleased manner; and his satisfaction as he scanned him, face and figure, was evident, though he expressed it indirectly.
“He’s a big fellow for a midshipman, Mrs. Hardres. I was a post captain at twenty-one.”
“The only son of a widow, Sir Horatio. But the time has come when the widow must give her mite.”
Tears came into the Admiral’s eyes. I never knew a man of such delicate sensibilities: though he did not know what fear meant, he could weep like a child.
“How old are you, Will?”
“Eighteen, sir,” said Will.
“You must make haste and be a lieutenant.”