This was when father took my sister Nellie and me for a day's visit to Brighton.

It was a wonderful experience to us, from the contrast the busy town on the coast offered to the quiet country village where we lived and of which my father was the pastor, buried in the bosom of the shires away from the bustling world, and out of contact with seafaring folk and those that voyage the deep.
Yes, there's no doubt of it.

That love for the sea, which made me wish to be a sailor as naturally as a cat loves cream, ran in my blood, and must have been bred in my bone, as father suggested.
Before, however, we could either of us pursue the psychological investigation of this theory any further, our argument was interrupted by my mother's coming to where we were standing under the elm-tree at the top of the garden.
Father at once put away his pipe on her approach, always respecting and honouring her beyond all women even as he loved her; and he greeted her with a smile of welcome.
"Well, dear ?" said he sympathetically as she held out the letter she carried and then placed her hand on his arm confidingly, turning her anxious face up to his in the certainty of finding him ready to share her trouble whatever it might be.

"Now tell me all about it." "It has come, Robert!" she exclaimed, nestling nearer to him.
"Yes, I see, dear," he replied, glancing at the open sheet; for they had no secrets from each other, and she had opened the letter already, although it had been addressed to him.

Then, looking at me, father added: "This is from Messrs.