He'll be gone fifteen if we all live till Wednesday week." "_Fifteen_?
But, Mother, if he were like me when he went, he can't be very like me now.

He must be a middle-aged man.

Do you think you'd know him ?" This question was more unfortunate than the other, and produced such howling and weeping, and beating of Biddy's knees as she rocked herself among the beans, that I should have thought every soul in the docks would have crowded round us.

But no one took any notice of us, and by degrees I calmed her, chiefly by the assertion--"He'll know you, Mother, anyhow." "He will so, GOD bless him!" said she, "And haven't I gone over it all in me own mind, often and often, when I'd see the vessels feelin' their way home through the darkness, and the coffee staymin' enough to cheer your heart wid the smell of it, and the laste taste in life of something betther in the stone bottle under me petticoats.

And then the big ship would be coming in with her lights at the head of her, and myself sitting alone with me patience, GOD helping me, and one and another strange face going by.