You must make haste and get finished at school, my lad, and then I can take you afloat, and make a sailor of you, the same as your grandfather and great-grandfather used to be." "Yes, I should like to be a sailor, father," I said.
"Ah, well, we shall see," he replied; "but that is not the business to see to now.

The first thing is to take in rations, so come along and have breakfast." I was quite willing, and in a few minutes we were seated in the snug cottage parlour with the window open, and the scent of the roses brought in by the breeze off the sea.
"Why, Sep," said my father, after I had been disposing of bacon and eggs and milk for some time, "how quiet you are! Isn't the breakfast so good as you get at school ?" "Heaps better, father;" for schools were very different places in those days to what they are now.
"Then what makes you so quiet ?" "I was thinking how nice it would be if it was always holidays." "With the sun shining warmly like it is now, and the sky blue, and the sea quite calm, eh ?" "Yes, father." "You young goose--I mean gander," he said laughing.

"Pleasure that has not been earned by hard work of some kind is poor tasteless stuff, of which everybody would soon tire; and as to its being always hot and sunshiny, why, my dear boy, I've been out in the tropics when the sky has been for weeks without a cloud, the seams oozing pitch, and the rails and bolts and bell all so hot you could not touch them, and we would have given anything for a thick mist or a heavy rain, or a good puff of cool wind.

No, no, my dear boy, England and its climate are best as they are.

In all my travels I never found a better or more healthy place; and as to the holidays--bah! Life was not made for play.
Kittens are the most playful things I know, but they soon give it up, and take to work." "Yes, father," I said with a sigh, "but school exercises are so hard." "The better lad you when you've mastered them.