“It can’t be done alone,” he said to himself, bitterly. “I must have help—help.”
And as he went home he made up his mind whose it should be.
CHAPTER III.
Captain Pennant’s family was by far the most popular in the neighborhood, and this in spite of the fact that they were far too poor to give entertainments on a large scale, or to contribute largely to charities, or to do any of those things upon which popularity is generally supposed to depend.
Captain Pennant himself, though not commonly considered to be overweighted with intellect, was a gentle and chivalrous gentleman, whose strong and kindly impulses were sometimes a little disconcerting to his wife. Thus he had, on one occasion, eighteen years before, brought home from Penzance, and placed in his wife’s lap, a baby girl, the orphan daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned while forming one of the crew of a life boat.
Mrs. Pennant, a stout, handsome little woman of the world, with twice her husband’s common sense, and none of his straightforward simplicity of character, had at last uttered a mild protest. She was in the habit of bearing with all his caprices so beautifully, respecting his prejudices and behaving with such perfect wifely submission, that he had not the least suspicion that the grey mare was the better horse. But she was a strict Conservative, and this sudden addition to her family from the ranks of the proletariat was the last straw which broke her patience.
“I am afraid, Graham,” she said, “that this dear little baby will be rather in the way in the servants’ hall.”
“The servants’ hall!” echoed Captain Pennant, indignantly, “Alicia, I’m astonished at your suggesting such a thing. I mean the darling to be brought up as our own child.”
“As our child! A fisherman’s daughter!”
“We are all of the same value in the sight of heaven, Alicia,” answered her husband, whose Conservatism was never allowed to interfere with his whims.