The spring of 1803 was an early one, and the middle of April saw the leaves thick upon the chestnut trees.  One evening we were all seated together over a dish of tea when we heard the scrunch of steps outside our door, and there was the postman with a letter in his hand.

“I think it is for me,” said my mother, and sure enough it was addressed in the most beautiful writing to Mrs. Mary Stone, of Friar’s Oak, and there was a red seal the size of a half-crown upon the outside of it with a flying dragon in the middle.

“Whom think you that it is from, Anson?” she asked.

“I had hoped that it was from Lord Nelson,” answered my father.  “It is time the boy had his commission.  But if it be for you, then it cannot be from any one of much importance.”

“Can it not!” she cried, pretending to be offended.  “You will ask my pardon for that speech, sir, for it is from no less a person than Sir Charles Tregellis, my own brother.”

My mother seemed to speak with a hushed voice when she mentioned this wonderful brother of hers, and always had done as long as I can remember, so that I had learned also to have a subdued and reverent feeling when I heard his name.  And indeed it was no wonder, for that name was never mentioned unless it were in connection with something brilliant and extraordinary.  Once we heard that he was at Windsor with the King.  Often he was at Brighton with the Prince.  Sometimes it was as a sportsman that his reputation reached us, as when his Meteor beat the Duke of Queensberry’s Egham, at Newmarket, or when he brought Jim Belcher up from Bristol, and sprang him upon the London fancy.  But usually it was as the friend of the great, the arbiter of fashions, the king of bucks, and the best-dressed man in town that his reputation reached us.  My father, however, did not appear to be elated at my mother’s triumphant rejoinder.

“Ay, and what does he want?” asked he, in no very amiable voice.

“I wrote to him, Anson, and told him that Rodney was growing a man now, thinking, since he had no wife or child of his own, he might be disposed to advance him.”

“We can do very well without him,” growled my father.  “He sheered off from us when the weather was foul, and we have no need of him now that the sun is shining.”

“Nay, you misjudge him, Anson,” said my mother, warmly.  “There is no one with a better heart than Charles; but his own life moves so smoothly that he cannot understand that others may have trouble.  During all these years I have known that I had but to say the word to receive as much as I wished from him.”

“Thank God that you never had to stoop to it, Mary.  I want none of his help.”

“But we must think of Rodney.”

“Rodney has enough for his sea-chest and kit.  He needs no more.”

“But Charles has great power and influence in London.  He could make Rodney known to all the great people.  Surely you would not stand in the way of his advancement.”