"Captain, do you remember Clara?"
"Your sister? Certainly. She was a little girl when we were young folks together."
"Yes, but only four years younger, after all, and the dearest child! We corresponded for years until—my trouble."
The captain eyed her with an amused smile.
"It seems a little strange to hear you call it that!"
"But what else was it? The bitterest trouble!"
"So it seems—yes. But how did you so completely lose sight of your family?"
"I stopped writing. They had no address. There were only Jane and Clara left, and Jane was absorbed in her own family. I sometimes think Clara might have understood and helped me; she was different from the rest and so fond of me."
"It was a foolish thing to cut yourself off so thoroughly, my friend."
"You don't need to tell me that—but neither can you ever understand how my pride was wounded, and how mortifying it was, after all my boasts of the glories in store for us, to have to confess what I was subjected to, that I might be fit to live among their high-mightinesses!"