Not that I would have left home at Christmas, and not that I lacked pleasure in the holidays.

But other fashions of games and speech and boyish etiquette lay between me and Jem; hospitality, if not choice, kept him closely with his school-fellows, and neither they nor he had part in the day-dreams of my soul.
For the spell of the Penny Numbers had not grown weaker as I grew older.
In the holidays I came back to them as to friends.

At school they made the faded maps on Snuffy's dirty walls alive with visions, and many a night as I lay awake with pain and over-weariness in the stifling dormitory, my thoughts took refuge not in dreams of home nor in castles of the air, but in phantom ships that sailed for ever round the world.
The day of the interview with my father I roused myself from my grievances to consider a more practical question.

Why should I not go to sea?
No matter whose fault it was, there was no doubt that I was ill-educated, and that I did not please my father as Jem did.

On the other hand I was strong and hardy, nimble and willing to obey; and I had roughed it enough, in all conscience.