Jeremy," his mother said, "I'd forgotten you were there. Rose
says you don't do anything Miss Jones tells you."

"Rose is silly," he answered. "She doesn't know anything about it. But
you will keep her, won't you, Mother?"

"I don't know--if she can't manage you--"

"But she can manage us. We'll be good as anything, I promise. You will
keep her, won't you, Mother?"

"Really, Jeremy," said Aunt Amy, "to bother your mother so! And it's
nearly time you went to bed."

He brushed her aside. "You will keep her, Mother, won't you?"

"It depends, dear," said Mrs. Cole, laughing. "You see--"

"No--we'll be bad with everyone else," he cried. "We will,
really--everyone else. And we'll be good with Miss Jones."

"Well, so long as you're good, dear," she said. "I'd no idea you liked
her so much."

"Oh, she's all right," he said. "But it isn't that--" Then he stopped;
he couldn't explain--especially with that idiot Aunt Amy there, who'd
only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else horrible.

Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in the
dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him, only the
clocks whispering.

What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were dead!
And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At the same
time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most strangely
moved him--her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack of relations.
Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps she also cried!

The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging figures,
all with businesses of their own.

It was very odd.

He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.

CHAPTER V. THE SEA-CAPTAIN

I

Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will
understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives thirty
years ago in Polchester.

It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a
considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on the
highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would not be
able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true, although I
myself can never be completely assured, possessing so vividly as I do a
memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the edge of Merazion Woods
and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet of ships full-sail upon the
bluest of seas, and would not be