feels, a Cecil, say, a Talbot or a Churchill, when he sees his
ancestors' names in the history books. My father had done something, he
was something. I don't know anyone who can better that title: a builder
of ships.

"And my father did more than that, he sailed them and owned them. So far
he had been under the Union flag, but this time, when he married my
mother, and his finest masterpiece, the _Erin's Isle_, was anchored in
St. John Harbour ready for sea, the Red Ensign was flying at the gaff."

"Did your mother go too?" asked Bill.

"Surely! you think that strange? Well, it was that or a life away at the
back of everything; life on a farm, with a visit once a year to St.
John. You like the country, don't you? Yes, but if you'd been down in
the back-woods, if you'd lived in the thrifty way French Canadians have
picked up from the Nova Scotians, and _improved_, if you were young and
wanted to see something, you'd risk your soul to get away from it. You
think a woman would have an awful life at sea. My mother jumped at it.
She married a man who was sailing as skipper before she was born, and
jumped at it! Taking everything into consideration, I don't blame her.
You see, she had ambition, my mother had. Her education had been good
enough, and she wanted to find a sphere where she could use it."

"And so she went to sea?" said Bill in gentle sarcasm. Bill's aversion
to the sea amounts almost to malevolence. She is a bad sailor.

"For the time being, and to see the world," said Mr. Carville. "She had
seen nothing, remember. Well, she saw it. They were away five years. You
can imagine my father's feelings when the first child was a girl. She
was born off the Ladrone Islands in the Pacific on the way to Hong Kong.
I suppose he got over the disappointment somehow, for I never heard my
mother say anything about quarrels except on the subject of living
ashore. I told you my mother had ambitions. She wanted to live in
England and have an establishment. But my father couldn't see the use.
If she wanted to live ashore, he argued, why couldn't she live in Hong
Kong or Bombay or Colombo until he was ready to retire? She would see
him just as often. No, she had no intention of doing that. She saw
exactly how much ice a skipper's wife cut in a community of skippers'
wives. She was after higher game. She settled it finally that if she
couldn't live in London, she'd stay aboard the ship all her life.

"She got her way, but not all