"Let fall!" said Clyde, too much interested in his new duties even to heed his mother. "Stern, all! Give way!"
"And I'm very, very glad to find you again, Clyde!" continued the lady.
"Oars! Now give way together!" and Clyde gathered up his tiller-ropes, and for the first time had an opportunity to attend to his mother, whom he had not seen for nearly three months.
The young Englishman was an only son, and his mother a widow, who had been utterly unable to manage him, after she had spoiled him by early indulgence. The youth had a freak, when he saw the Academy Ship, that he should like to join her, but soon changed his mind. As the institution seemed to be the only means of saving him from his own folly and wilfulness, Mrs. Blacklock had reluctantly permitted Mr. Lowington to take the control of him. Though he had run away, and had been subjected to sharp but excellent discipline, he had done very well as soon as he found it was no longer possible for him to have his own way.
"I have been looking for you these two months, Clyde," said his mother. "Where have you been?"
Clyde told her where he had been.
"I went to St. Petersburg, but the ship had not been there, and I returned to Stockholm, and have spent the last month in Sweden."
"We were rusticating among the islands in the Gulf of Bothnia while you were looking for me."
"Why haven't you written to me, Clyde?"
"I did not know where you were."