he Wise
Men's Star there still, do you suppose? That's the Plough, isn't it?
If one was up in the Plough could one see Oakfield, do you think?'

'I used to like to think one could,' said the captain, who had come up
behind them. 'Many's the time, when I was a little bit of a middy, I
used to watch the stars and feel quite friendly to them because they
could see home. And the Plough, when I could see it, was a real old
friend, I knew the look of it so well from this window.'

'I shall do that when I'm a middy,' said Godfrey gravely, 'and I shall
think of them seeing my aunts and Oakfield, and they'll think of them
seeing me.'

'So you've quite made up your mind to be a middy?' said the captain,
with a hand on Godfrey's shoulder.

'Quite,' said the little boy earnestly; 'Aunt Angel says everybody must
be useful, like you and Kiah, and she's teaching me to be. I'm like
her's and Aunt Betty's little oak-tree, and they hope I shall grow up a
very brave sailor. But she's really braver than me, for she says it
will be very hard for her not to mind when the Frenchies shoot my leg
off, and I don't think I shall mind much.'

Angel's cheeks were crimson at hearing her own words repeated. She
looked so very sweet and womanly as she sat there in the window.

They had not lighted the candles again, and only the flickering
fire-light played about her, touching her white dress and the curly
locks, knotted up high behind her head, with the gleaming pearls among
them.

The captain stroked Godfrey's hair.

'Ay, little man,' he said, 'the bravest hearts are the ones we leave at
home; and more shame to us that we're not finer fellows when they take
so much thought for us.'

Just then Betty called Godfrey, and he ran to bid Pete good-night. The
captain stood looking after him.

'His Majesty's navy will be the richer for that lad one day, Miss
Angelica,' he said.

Angel flushed with pleasure.

'I do hope so,' she said simply; 'Betty and I are almost afraid
sometimes when we think what we want him to be, and that there is only
us to teach him and fit him for it.'

'I don't think you need be afraid,' said Captain Maitland quietly; 'the
navy is a rough school, Miss Angelica, but so is the world all over, I
fancy, and I've known plenty of men who've lived and died on board as
pure and simple as if they'd never left home. And they were mostly men
who'd such a home life as your little lad to stick by them and keep
them str