“A hundred pounds.”

“Why, the purser couldn’t work it out quicker,” he cried in his delight.  “Here’s for you again!  We passed the Straits and worked up to the Azores, where we fell in with the La Sabina from the Mauritius with sugar and spices.  Twelve hundred pounds she’s worth to me, Mary, my darling, and never again shall you soil your pretty fingers or pinch upon my beggarly pay.

My dear mother had borne her long struggle without a sign all these years, but now that she was so suddenly eased of it she fell sobbing upon his neck.  It was a long time before my father had a thought to spare upon my examination in arithmetic.

“It’s all in your lap, Mary,” said he, dashing his own hand across his eyes.  “By George, lass, when this leg of mine is sound we’ll bear down for a spell to Brighton, and if there is a smarter frock than yours upon the Steyne, may I never tread a poop again.  But how is it that you are so quick at figures, Rodney, when you know nothing of history or geography?”

I tried to explain that addition was the same upon sea or land, but that history and geography were not.

“Well,” he concluded, “you need figures to take a reckoning, and you need nothing else save what your mother wit will teach you.  There never was one of our breed who did not take to salt water like a young gull.  Lord Nelson has promised me a vacancy for you, and he’ll be as good as his word.”

So it was that my father came home to us, and a better or kinder no lad could wish for.  Though my parents had been married so long, they had really seen very little of each other, and their affection was as warm and as fresh as if they were two newly-wedded lovers.  I have learned since that sailors can be coarse and foul, but never did I know it from my father; for, although he had seen as much rough work as the wildest could wish for, he was always the same patient, good-humoured man, with a smile and a jolly word for all the village.  He could suit himself to his company, too, for on the one hand he could take his wine with the vicar, or with Sir James Ovington, the squire of the parish; while on the other he would sit by the hour amongst my humble friends down in the smithy, with Champion Harrison, Boy Jim, and the rest of them, telling them such stories of Nelson and his men that I have seen the Champion knot his great hands together, while Jim’s eyes have smouldered like the forge embers as he listened.

My father had been placed on half-pay, like so many others of the old war officers, and so, for nearly two years, he was able to remain with us.  During all this time I can only once remember that there was the slightest disagreement between him and my mother.  It chanced that I was the cause of it, and as great events sprang out of it, I must tell you how it came about.  It was indeed the first of a series of events which affected not only my fortunes, but those of very much more important people.