I am sure I have been greeting (Old English: weeping) like a bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married, whenever I called to mind you and my dear father.

You will be very good to him while I am away?
But I need not ask you that.

Six months, he says--I mean Captain Bruce--will, according to the Edinburg doctor's advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for he declares he likes no other place half so well.
"I am right to go with him for these six months--am I not?
But I need not ask; you sent me word so yourself.

He had nobody to take care of him--nobody in the world but me.

His sisters are gay, lively girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost strangers.