We felt and knew without babbling into words.
So all that day my mother hovered about me with a quiet face and hungry eyes, but never one word that might have darkened my going.

She had braced her heart to it, as the women of those days had to do, and as all women of all times must whose men go down to the sea in ships.
And I do not think there was any resentment in her mind at my feeling for Carette.

For she spoke of her many times and always in the nicest way, seeing perhaps the pleasure it gave me.

She was a very wise and thoughtful woman, though not so much given to the expression of her wisdom as was Jeanne Falla, and I think she understood that this too was inevitable, and so she had quietly brought her mind to it.

But after all, all this is but saying that her tower of quiet strength was built on hidden foundations of faith and hope, and her mother-love needed no telling.
Next day my grandfather and Krok made holiday, in order to carry me over to Peter Port and see the _Swallow_ for themselves, and my mother's fervent "God keep you, Phil!" and all the other prayers that I felt in her arms round my neck, were with me still as we ran past Brecqhou, and I stood with an arm round the mast looking eagerly for possible, but unlikely, sight of Carette.
We were too low down to see the house, which lay in a hollow.