I think the first comfort we really had was in our manly resolves to do everything that was right, and to be everything that was brave and good, for the sake of this widowed mother of ours, and out of respect to the memory of our hero father.
But as I have said, the grief made us old, and mind you, age goes not with years; the poor miserable children that beg in the streets of London, half naked and in rags, whose parents are more unnatural than the wildest beasts, they, I say, are as old in spirit and heart, and often in wisdom, as happy young men and women of over twenty-one.
It was strange, too, that, children though we were, we could not help feeling that henceforward we would be our mother’s protectors.
Ah, I have to confess, though, that, so hard was the blow to bear, so intense was the grief we experienced for father’s death, we saw no silver lining to the cloud for many a day, and, at night, neither Jill nor I could get our hearts quite round those beautiful words in God’s own prayer, “Thy will be done.”
And so months and years flew by, and Jill and I grew big and strong, and at the age of sixteen we brothers took the position of second and third mates on the Salamander. There really was no such rating as third mate, but the captain and everyone else who had anything to do with the ship, knew well we would not be parted if possible.
In all these years we had only been twice home, for our ship had what might be called a roving commission. Captain Coates was part owner of her and the rest of the owners knew well he would do all for the best, so that when abroad he invariably took whatever turned uppermost in the shape of trade. When unlading at one port, he seldom knew where he would be sailing to next. Sometimes we would take several trips back and fore between the same two ports. In a word, Captain Coates despised no trade or trip either by which he saw his way to make an honest penny.
On our last return home, we found that mamma was much more cheerful and resigned, that Auntie Serapheema had not yet got married. It was not even rumoured that she had refused many offers. She seemed wholly bound up in mamma.
Mummy Gray, Sarah, and Robert, were just as we had left them, Robert and Trots the pony being both stiffening a trifle with age.
Mattie was grown almost out of “kenning,” as the Scotch say. She had slipped up, but she was none the less wonderfully beautiful.