ADRIFT Having got money enough to last long with one brought up to simplicity, and resolved to have nothing to do for a while with charity or furnished lodgings (what though kept by one's own nurse), I cast about now for good reason to be off from all the busy works at Bruntsea.

So soon after such a tremendous blow, it was impossible for me to push my own little troubles and concerns upon good Mr.Shovelin's family, much as I longed to know what was to become of my father's will, if any thing.

But my desire to be doing something, or, at least, to get away for a time from Bruntsea, was largely increased by Sir Montague Hockin's strange behavior toward me.
That young man, if still he could be called young--which, at my age, scarcely seemed to be his right, for he must have been ten years older than poor Firm--began more and more every day to come after me, just when I wanted to be quite alone.

There was nothing more soothing to my thoughts and mind (the latter getting quiet from the former, I suppose) than for the whole of me to rest a while in such a little scollop of the shingle as a new-moon tide, in little crescents, leaves just below high-water mark.

And now it was new-moon tide again, a fortnight after the flooding of our fly by the activity of the full moon; and, feeling how I longed to understand these things--which seem to be denied to all who are of the same sex as the moon herself--I sat in a very nice nick, where no wind could make me look worse than nature willed.