‘I don’t say no,’ she replied; ’but there are others to be consulted beside me.’

So Harry, looking at Mr. Truelocke, said, ’Father, call your thoughts off from your unkind Mother Church, and bestow some of them on your dutiful son.  Will you give me your sanction and your blessing, if I can win this lady to say she will be mine?’

‘I can never refuse thee my blessing, Harry, and that thou knowest,’ said the old man.  ’But it’s fitting that I should think of the lady too, and bid her consider what she does.’

He turned to me, which troubled me greatly, and, looking sadly and kindly at me, said,—­

‘If you take this boy of mine, madam,’ said he, ’you take the son of a poor, despised, aged man, who can give you and him nothing but a father’s blessing, coupled with his burdensome infirmity to care for and tend, till death remove it;’ words which loosed my tongue straightway to say I should deem such an office a pride and honour.

‘That is not all,’ said Mr. Truelocke.  ’Harry hath chosen to embrace a dangerous wandering way of life, neither very glorious nor very profitable.  And his bride will have to spend many a sad lonely hour, while her husband is tossing on the seas, and she sitting trembling at home, deprived of his protection and doubtful of his fate.’

‘That’s a very odd way of recommending my suit, father,’ said Harry, a little uneasily.

‘Nay, I have not done my recommendation,’ replied Mr. Truelocke; ’let me say all.  You should further consider, Mistress Lucy, that this son of mine is so light of spirit and careless of speech, that some will say he has no constancy of disposition.  I will not so far slander him, for I know him better; but this I must say, for it is truth, that he has not yet that confirmed and settled piety I should desire in the husband of mine own daughter, if I had one.  Now I have laid before you all the disadvantages of the match, it is for you to say if you will have it.’

I wonder if ever a love-suit was so urged before?  It made me heartily angry to hear poor Harry so disparaged to his face, and to see him sit so downcast, a cloud of angry colour mounting to his very forehead.  I suppose pity for him killed all my bashfulness, for I stood up, and said passionately, I thought no worse of a man for having the bold adventurous nature which loved seafaring; that was a noble trade, I said, and our mariners the very flower of England; and as for light spirit and merry speech, they were but flowers covering a rock, for steadfast as a rock was the heart under that gay show.

‘And if you speak of piety,’ I wound up, ’I am sure Harry hath as much of it as I have, at least; he has some faith, some love, and so I hope have I; but we will help each other up to better things; and here is my hand on it if he will take it.’  With that I held out my hand to him, and he sprang up and grasped it in both his, looking exultingly at his father; it was a pleasure to see how his face had changed all in a moment.  Mr. Truelocke smiled, but he shook his head too, saying,—­