so thoroughly dauntless, and such a grand beard! Ten times more like an

admiral than old Flapfin or my father is, if he only knew how to hold

his pipe. There is something about him so dignified, so calm, and so

majestic; but, for all that, I like the young man better. I have a great

mind to take half a peep at him; somebody might ask whether he was there

or not."

Being a young and bashful maid, as well as by birth a lady, she had

felt that it might be a very nice thing to contemplate sailors in the

distance, abstract sailors, old men who pulled ropes, or lounged on the

deck, if there was one. But to steal an unsuspected view at a young man

very well known to her, and acknowledged (not only by his mother

and himself, but also by every girl in the parish) as the Adonis of

Springhaven--this was a very different thing, and difficult to justify

even to one's self. The proper plan, therefore, was to do it, instead of

waiting to consider it.

"How very hard upon him it does seem," she whispered to herself, after a

good gaze at him, "that he must not even dream of having any hope of

me, because he has not happened to be born a gentleman! But he looks a

thousand times more like one than nine out of ten of the great gentlemen

I know--or at any rate he would if his mother didn't make his clothes."

For Zebedee Tugwell had a son called "Dan," as like him as a tender pea

can be like a tough one; promising also to be tough, in course of time,

by chafing of the world and weather. But at present Dan Tugwell was as

tender to the core as a marrowfat dallying till its young duck should be

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>