“Why, Tom, in your present humor, you think so; but all do not keep to the same way of thinking as I did till it was too late to think about marrying; but still I do not think that I should have been happy as a single man, if it had not been for my falling in with Bessy.  I should have been very lonely, I expect, for I began to feel so.  When you come to your own door, Tom, home looks cheerless if there is no bright eye to welcome you, and the older a man gets the more he feels that he was not intended to live single.  My yearning after something to love and to love me, which is in our nature, was satisfied, first by having Bessy, and then by having you—­and I’m thankful.”

“You might have married, and have been very unhappy.”

“I might, and I might have been very happy, had I chosen a wife as a man should do.”

“And how is that, pray, Bramble?”

“Why, Tom, I’ve often thought upon it.  In the first place look out for good temper:  if you find that you may be happy, even if your wife is a silly woman; assure yourself first of her temper, and then you must judge her by the way in which she does those duties which have fallen to her lot; for if a girl is a dutiful and affectionate daughter there is little fear but that she will prove a loving and obedient wife.  But I think we have had our spell here, Tom, and it’s rather cold:  rouse up one of those chaps, and tell him to come to the helm.  I’ll coil myself up and have a snooze till the morning, and do you do the same.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

     In which I receive a very severe Blow from a Party or Parties
     unknown.

The day after this conversation we fell in with several vessels windbound at the entrance of the Channel.  I took charge of one, and the wind shifting to the S.W., and blowing strong, I carried her up to the Pool.  As soon as I could leave her I took a boat to go down to Greenwich, as I was most anxious to have a long conversation with Virginia.  It was a dark squally night, with rain at intervals between the gusts of wind, and I was wet through long before I landed at the stairs, which was not until past eleven o’clock.  I paid the waterman, and hastened up to my mother’s house, being aware that they would either be all in bed or about to retire.  It so happened that I did not go the usual way, but passed by the house of old Nanny; and as I walked by with a quick step, and was thinking of her and her misfortunes, I fell over something which, in the dark, I did not perceive, and which proved to be some iron railings, which the workmen who were fixing them up had carelessly left on the ground, previous to their returning to their work on the ensuing morning.  Fortunately the spikes at the ends of them were from me, and I received no injury, except a severe blow on the shin; and as I stopped a moment to rub it, I thought that I heard a cry from the direction of