“I suppose it is, in a general way,” said Jack, all smiles and good-humour. “But—if I could get a living on shore, Herbert, I don’t see but what my duty would lie in doing it as much as it now lies at sea.”
“You may not see it, John. Chopping and changing often brings a man to poverty.”
“Oh, I’d take care, I hope, not to come to poverty. Down, Dash! Had I a farm of two or three hundred acres, I could make it answer well, if any man could. You know what a good farmer I was as a boy, Herbert—in practical knowledge, I mean—and how I loved it. I like the sea very well, but I love farming. It was my born vocation.”
“I wish you’d not talk at random!” cried Herbert, fretfully. “Born vocation! You might just as well say you were born to be a mountebank! And where would you get the money to stock a farm of two or three hundred acres? You have put none by, I expect. You never could keep your pence in your pocket when a lad: they were thrown away right and left.”
“That’s true,” laughed Jack. “Other lads used to borrow them. True also that I have not put money by, Herbert. I have not been able to.”
“Of course you have not! It wouldn’t be you if you had.”
“No, Dash, there’s not a bit more; you’ve had it all,” cried Jack to the dog. But he, ever generous-natured, did not tell his brother why he had not been able to put by: that the calls made upon him by his wife’s mother—Aunt Dean, as they still styled her—were so heavy and so perpetual. She wanted a great deal for herself, and she presented vast claims for the expenses of Jack’s two little children, and for the maintenance of her daughter when Alice stayed on shore. Alice whispered to Jack she believed her mother was making a private purse for herself. Good-natured Jack thought it very likely, but he did not stop the supplies. Just as Aunt Dean had been a perpetual drain upon her brother, Jacob Lewis, during his lifetime, so she now drained Jack.
“Then, with no means at command, what utter folly it is for you to think of leaving the sea?” resumed the parson.
“So it is, Herbert,” acquiesced Jack. “I assure you I don’t think of it.”