"
"Do you remember the answer you gave me?"
"Yes, I told you that I had left in England, on her mother's bosom, a
little girl who would now be about your own age, and that I could not
observe the wind play amongst the curls of your fair hair without
thinking of her, and that it sometimes made my breast swell like the
mizen-top-sail before the breeze."
"Yes, and when I promised to keep out of your sight, not to reawaken
your grief, you told me it was a kind of grief that did you more good
than harm, and that the more it made you grieve, the happier you would
be."
"All true:" replied the sailor, whose excitement was melting away
before the soft tones of the child like hoar frost in the sunshine.
"Then I promised to come and talk to you about your Susan every day;
and did I not keep my word?"
"Certainly, Miss Sophia; and it is only bare justice to say that you
gracefully yielded to all my fatherly whims, and even went so far as
to wear a brown dress oftener than another, because I said that my
little Susan wore that color the last time I kissed her."
"Oh, but that is a secret, Willis."
"Yes, but I am going to tell all our secrets--that is an idea of mine.
You then went and learned Susan's mother's favorite song, with which
you would sometimes sing me to sleep, like a great baby that I am, and
make me fancy that I was surrounded by my wife and daughter, and was
comfortably smoking my pipe in my own cottage, with a glass of grog at
my elbow.
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