Harry went on board the frigate in which Headland was serving as first lieutenant.
“You are sure of your promotion, Headland,” he said after their greeting was over. “I have just got a letter from my uncle telling me your name is on the list. You deserve a spell on shore. We are to go into harbour to be paid off to-morrow, and as soon as I am free you must start with me for Texford, where my family are now residing. Captain Fancourt has already spoken to them of you, and you will receive a hearty welcome. No excuses, old fellow, you will be Captain Headland by that time, and that alone will be sufficient introduction to any family in the land.”
Headland hesitated. He thought of making a tour round England, and perhaps going over to France, to have a look at the country from which Englishmen had so long been excluded, but Harry overcame all objections, and Headland agreed should he not be appointed to a command, which was not very likely, to accompany his friend to Texford.
Chapter Seventeen.
Second Period of Maiden May’s History.
Time went on, and nothing occurred to interrupt the even tenor of the Miss Pembertons’ well-spent lives. They never wearied in their efforts to benefit the bodies and souls of their poorer neighbours, and if some were ungrateful, many blessed them for the words they spoke, and the kind acts they performed. Their young pupil, in winter and summer, rain and sunshine, continued to come to them every day. She never wished for a holiday, and it would have been a trial to her to have had to keep away from Downside. Though she was as loving as ever to those at home, she was able to bestow an equal amount of affection on the ladies who devoted themselves to her instruction.
She was now no longer the little fisher maiden she had appeared in former years; but the charms of her mind and person having gradually been developed, though she herself was scarcely aware of the change, she had become a truly lovely girl already entering womanhood.
Adam had lost none of the affection he had from the first felt for the child, whose life he had saved. He could no longer, however, properly call her his little Maiden May, for she had become a full-grown damsel, full of life and spirits; and if, conscious that she was not his daughter, she did not bestow on him all of a daughter’s affection, she yet treated him with respect, and so lovingly and kindly, that he had no cause to complain. Her tastes were refined, and her intellect expanding as she advanced in knowledge, she could not help seeing the space gradually widening between herself and her foster-parents and their sons. Yet, with tact and right feeling, she had contrived not to let the young men feel how fully alive she was to the difference between them. They, however, gradually became aware of it, and treated her with that deference which they considered to be her due, as superior to themselves. To the elder ones this was easy, but it caused Jacob no small exercise of self restraint not to behave towards Maiden May as he had been accustomed to do, when under his charge she was allowed to go blackberrying, or to wander along the shore picking up shells.