“Oh! uncle dear, and then the Charity Commissioners may come in, and give all your money to fat, comfortable tradesmen’s children, or well-to-do professional men, instead of to your old people, and the clergyman will be master of your money; and the old people will not be grateful, and all will go wrong, and my dear uncle will be forgotten.  Oh! no.”

“I say, come, come; you’re too knowing.  You’re trying to knock a pet scheme of mine on the head.”

The old man was genuinely concerned, and he felt as if some prop had been knocked away from him.  But his sweet niece soon brought him round.  She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now applied the antidote.

“Supposing you give us two ships, you give yourself a better memorial than poor Alleyn of Dulwich, or Roan of Greenwich.  Dear uncle, a charity which can be enjoyed by the idle is soon forgotten, and the pious founder is no more than a weed round the base of his own monument; he has not even a name.  But you may actually see your own memorial working good long, long before you die, and you may see exactly how things will go on when your time is over.  When you make out your deed of gift, exact the condition that one vessel must always be called after you, no matter how long or how often the ships are renewed.  Sir James Roche can advise you about that.  Place your portrait in the ship, and make some such provision as that she shall always carry a flag with your name, if you want to flaunt it, you proud thing!  Then something like, at any rate, three thousand sufferers will associate your name with their happiness and cure every year; and they will say in every port in England, ’I was cured on the Robert Cassall,’ or ‘I should have lost that hand,’ or ’I was dying of typhoid and our skipper thought I needed salts, but they cured me on the Robert Cassall.’  And the great ships will pass your beautiful ship, and when people ask ’What is that craft, and who is Cassall?’ they will say that Cassall gave of his abundance during his lifetime, so that seamen might be relieved of bitter suffering; and those brave men will be so very grateful.  And oh! uncle, fancy going out to sea in your own monument, and watching your own wealth working blessedness before your eyes.  Why, you will actually have all the pleasures of immortality before you have lost the power of seeing or knowing anything.  Oh, uncle dear, think if you can only see one sailor’s limbs saved by means of your money!  Think of having a hundred living monuments of your goodness walking about in the beautiful world—­saved and made whole by you!”

The girl frightened the plucky old gentleman.  His voice trembled, and he said, “Why, we must send you to Parliament!  You can beat most of those dull sconces.  Why, you’re a no-mistake born orator—­a talkee-talkee shining light!  But if you go in for woman’s rights and take to short hair, I shall die, after burning my will!  And now you kiss me, my darling, and don’t scare