unaffected to be
that. He was a railway clerk, and had recently been appointed to
Langrye station, about fifty miles from Clatterby, which necessitated
his leaving his mother's roof; but Mrs Tipps consoled herself with the
intention of giving up her little villa and going to live at Langrye.

Poverty, after the captain's death, had seized upon the widow, and held
her tightly down during the whole of that period when Joseph and his
only sister Netta were being educated. But Mrs Tipps did her duty
bravely by them. She was a practically religious woman, and tried most
earnestly to rule her life in accordance with the blessed Word of God.
She trained up her children "in the way that they should go," in
thorough reliance on the promise that "they would not depart from it
when they were old." She accepted the command, "owe no man anything but
to love one another," as given to herself as well as to the world at
large--hence she kept out of debt, and was noted for deeds of kindness
wherever she went.

But she was pinched during this period--terribly pinched--no one knew
how severely save her daughter Netta, to whom she had been in the habit
of confiding all her joys and sorrows from the time that the child could
form any conception of what joy or sorrow meant. But Mrs Tipps did not
weep over her sorrows, neither did she become boisterous over her joys.
She was an equable, well-balanced woman in everything except the little
matter of her nervous system. Netta was a counterpart of her mother.
As time went on expenses increased, and living on small means became
more difficult, so that Mrs Tipps was compelled to contemplate leaving
the villa, poor and small though it was, and taking a cheaper residence.
At this juncture a certain Captain Lee, an old friend of her late
husband--also a sea-captain, and an extremely gruff one--called upon the
widow, found out her straitened circumstances, and instantly offered her
five hundred pounds, which she politely but firmly refused.

"But madam," said the excitable captain on that memorable occasion, "I
must insist on your taking it. Excuse me, I have my own reasons,--and
they are extremely good ones,--for saying that it is my duty to give you
this sum and yours to take it. I owe it to your late husband, who more
than once laid me under obligations to him."

Mrs Tipps shook her little head and smiled.

"You are very kind, Captain Lee, to put it in that way, and I have no
doubt tha