“I have always wished to understand what you have told me, and tried to obey you, father,” said the boy.
“You have been a good lad, Michael, and have more than repaid me for any trouble you may have caused me. You are getting a big boy now, though, and it’s time that you should know certain matters about yourself which no one else is so well able to tell you as I am.”
The boy looked up from his work, wondering what Paul Trefusis was going to say.
“You know, lad, that you are called Michael Penguyne, and that my name is Paul Trefusis. Has it never crossed your mind that though I have always treated you as a son—and you have ever behaved towards me as a good and dutiful son should behave—that you were not really my own child?”
“To say the truth, I have never thought about it, father,” answered the boy, looking up frankly in the old man’s face. “I am oftener called Trefusis than Penguyne, so I fancied that Penguyne was another name tacked on to Michael, and that Trefusis was just as much my name as yours. And oh! father, I would rather be your child than the son of anybody else.”
“There is no harm in wishing that, Michael; but it’s as well that you should know the real state of the case, and as I cannot say what may happen to me, I do not wish to put off telling you any longer. I am not as strong and young as I once was, and maybe God will think fit to take me away before I have reached the threescore years and ten which He allows some to live. We should not put off doing to another time what can be done now, and so you see I wish to say what has been on my mind to tell you for many a day past, though I have not liked to say it, lest it should in any way grieve you. You promise me, Michael, you won’t let it do that? You know how much I and granny and Nelly love you, and will go on loving you as much as ever.”
“I know you do, father, and so do granny and Nelly; I am sure they love me,” said the boy gazing earnestly into Paul’s face, with wonder and a shade of sorrow depicted on his own countenance.
“That’s true,” said Paul. “But about what I was going to say to you.
“My wife, who is gone to heaven, Nelly’s mother, and I, never had another child but her. Your father, Michael, as true-hearted a seaman as ever stepped, had been my friend and shipmate for many a long year. We were bred together, and had belonged to the same boat fishing off this coast till we were grown men, when at last we took it into our heads to wish to visit foreign climes, and so we went to sea together. After knocking about for some years, and going to all parts of the world, we returned home, and both fell in love, and married. Your mother was an orphan, without kith or kin, that your father could hear of—a good, pretty girl she was, and worthy of him.
“We made up our minds that we would stay on shore and follow our old calling and look after our wives and families. We had saved some money, but it did not go as far as we thought it would, and we agreed that if we could make just one more trip to sea, we should gain enough for what we wanted.