"No; you and I are going alone this time; do you think you will find my company sufficient for once?" he asked, smiling down at her.
"Oh yes, indeed, papa; I think it will be ever so nice to have you all to myself; it's so seldom I can."
They took the path along the bluffs toward "Tom Never's Head."
When they had fairly left the village behind, so that no one could overhear anything they might say to each other, the captain said, "I want to have a talk with you, daughter, and we may as well take it out here in the sweet fresh air, as shut up in the house."
"Oh, yes, papa; it is so much pleasanter! I can hardly bear to stay in the house at all down here at the seashore; and it seemed a long while that you left me alone there this afternoon."
"Yes, I suppose so: and I hope I shall not have occasion to do so again. My child, did you ever consider what it is that makes you so rebellious, so unwilling to submit to authority, and so ready to fly into a passion and speak insolently to your superiors?"
"I don't quite understand you papa," she said. "I only know that I can't bear to have people try to rule me who have no right."
"Sometimes you are not willing to be ruled even by your father; yet I hardly suppose you would say he has no right?"
"Oh, no, papa; I know better than that," she said, blushing and hanging her head; "I know you have the best right in the world."
"Yet sometimes you disobey me; at others obey in an angry, unwilling way that shows you would rebel if you dared.