ially mamma; she is thinking so much of poor Richard!
And we agreed it would be best to have the harp, for it seems to amuse
her more than the piano-forte. I will tell you why she is out of
spirits. When the Crofts called this morning, (they called here
afterwards, did not they?), they happened to say, that her brother,
Captain Wentworth, is just returned to England, or paid off, or
something, and is coming to see them almost directly; and most
unluckily it came into mamma's head, when they were gone, that
Wentworth, or something very like it, was the name of poor Richard's
captain at one time; I do not know when or where, but a great while
before he died, poor fellow! And upon looking over his letters and
things, she found it was so, and is perfectly sure that this must be
the very man, and her head is quite full of it, and of poor Richard!
So we must be as merry as we can, that she may not be dwelling upon
such gloomy things."

The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were,
that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome,
hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his
twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and
unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any
time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard
of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death
abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.

He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for
him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a
thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done
anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name,
living or dead.

He had been several years at sea, and had, in the course of those
removals to which all midshipmen are liable, and especially such
midshipmen as every captain wishes to get rid of, been six months on
board Captain Frederick Wentworth's frigate, the Laconia; and from the
Laconia he had, under the influence of his captain, written the only
two letters which his father and mother had ever received from him
during the whole of his absence; that is to say, the only two
disinterested letters; all the rest had been mere applications for
money.

In each letter he had spoken well of his captain; but yet, so little
were they in the habit of attending to such matters, so unob