Only once in those long years did my father return home, which will show you what it meant to be the wife of a sailor in those days.  It was just after we had moved from Portsmouth to Friar’s Oak, whither he came for a week before he set sail with Admiral Jervis to help him to turn his name into Lord St. Vincent.  I remember that he frightened as well as fascinated me with his talk of battles, and I can recall as if it were yesterday the horror with which I gazed upon a spot of blood upon his shirt ruffle, which had come, as I have no doubt, from a mischance in shaving.  At the time I never questioned that it had spurted from some stricken Frenchman or Spaniard, and I shrank from him in terror when he laid his horny hand upon my head.  My mother wept bitterly when he was gone, but for my own part I was not sorry to see his blue back and white shorts going down the garden walk, for I felt, with the heedless selfishness of a child, that we were closer together, she and I, when we were alone.

I was in my eleventh year when we moved from Portsmouth to Friar’s Oak, a little Sussex village to the north of Brighton, which was recommended to us by my uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, one of whose grand friends, Lord Avon, had had his seat near there.  The reason of our moving was that living was cheaper in the country, and that it was easier for my mother to keep up the appearance of a gentlewoman when away from the circle of those to whom she could not refuse hospitality.  They were trying times those to all save the farmers, who made such profits that they could, as I have heard, afford to let half their land lie fallow, while living like gentlemen upon the rest.  Wheat was at a hundred and ten shillings a quarter, and the quartern loaf at one and ninepence.  Even in the quiet of the cottage of Friar’s Oak we could scarce have lived, were it not that in the blockading squadron in which my father was stationed there was the occasional chance of a little prize-money.  The line-of-battle ships themselves, tacking on and off outside Brest, could earn nothing save honour; but the frigates in attendance made prizes of many coasters, and these, as is the rule of the service, were counted as belonging to the fleet, and their produce divided into head-money.  In this manner my father was able to send home enough to keep the cottage and to pay for me at the day school of Mr. Joshua Allen, where for four years I learned all that he had to teach.  It was at Allen’s school that I first knew Jim Harrison, Boy Jim as he has always been called, the nephew of Champion Harrison of the village smithy.  I can see him as he was in those days with great, floundering, half-formed limbs like a Newfoundland puppy, and a face that set every woman’s head round as he passed her.  It was in those days that we began our lifelong friendship, a friendship which still in our waning years binds us closely as two brothers.  I taught him his exercises, for he never loved the sight of a book, and he in turn made me box and wrestle, tickle trout on the Adur, and snare rabbits on Ditching Down, for his hands were as active as his brain was slow.  He was two years my elder, however, so that, long before I had finished my schooling, he had gone to help his uncle at the smithy.