Weston speaks so much more cleverly than I can, that I could not explain to him then that I am still but too apt to dream!  But the harbour’s mouth is now only the beginning of my visions, which stretch far over the sea beyond, and over the darker line of that horizon where the ships come and go.

I hope it is not wrong to dream.  My father was so modest as well as ambitious, so good as well as so gallant, that I would rather die than disgrace him by empty conceit and unprofitable hopes.

Weston is a very religious fellow, though he does not “cant” at all.  When I was going away to Dartmouth, and he saw me off (for we were great friends), one of the last things he said to me was, “I say, don’t leave off saying your prayers, you know.”

I haven’t, and I told him so this last time.  I often pray that if ever I am great I may be good too; and sometimes I pray that if I try hard to be good God will let me be great as well.

The most wonderful thing was old Rowe’s taking a cheap ticket and coming down to see me last summer.  I never can regret my voyage with him in the Betsy, for I did thoroughly enjoy it, though I often think how odd it is that in my vain, jealous wild-goose chase after adventures I missed the chance of distinguishing myself in the only Great Emergency which has yet occurred in our family.

A VERY ILL-TEMPERED FAMILY.

    “Finding, following, keeping, struggling,
      Is HE sure to bless?”

Hymn of the Eastern Church.

CHAPTER I.

A FAMILY FAILING.

We are a very ill-tempered family.

I want to say it, and not to unsay it by any explanations, because I think it is good for us to face the fact in the unadorned form in which it probably presents itself to the minds of our friends.

Amongst ourselves we have always admitted it by pieces, as it were, or in negative propositions.  We allow that we are firm of disposition; we know that we are straightforward; we show what we feel.  We have opinions and principles of our own; we are not so thick-skinned as some good people, nor as cold-blooded as others.

When two of us quarrelled (and Nurse used to say that no two of us ever agreed), the provocation always seemed, to each of us, great enough amply to excuse the passion.  But I have reason to think that people seldom exclaimed, “What grievances those poor children are exasperated with!” but that they often said, “What terrible tempers they all have!”

There are five of us:  Philip and I are the eldest; we are twins.  My name is Isobel, and I never allow it to be shortened into the ugly word Bella nor into the still more hideous word Izzy, by either the servants or the children.  My aunt Isobel never would, and neither will I.

“The children” are the other three.  They are a good deal younger than Philip and I, so we have always kept them in order.  I do not mean that we taught them to behave wonderfully well, but I mean that we made them give way to us elder ones.  Among themselves they squabbled dreadfully.