The Coombers were not a happy family, for the fisherman was a stern, hard man by nature, and since he had lost his little girl he had become harder, his neighbours said. At all events, his wife and children grew more afraid of him--afraid of provoking his stern displeasure by any of those little playful raids children so delight in; and every one of them looked forward to the day when they could run away from home and go to sea, as their grown-up brother had done. Bob, the eldest now at home, was already contemplating taking this step very soon, and had promised to help Dick and Tom when they were old enough. It had been a startling revelation to Bob to hear his father speak as he had done on the beach at Fellness about his brother, for he had long ago decided that his father did not care a pin for any of them, unless it was for the baby sister who had died, and even of that he was not quite sure. He had made up his mind, as he walked through the storm that morning, that he would not go back again, but make his way to Grimsby, or some other seaport town, after his business at Fellness was done. But what he had heard on the beach from his father somewhat shook his purpose, and when he learned from Dame Peters afterwards, that the child they had rescued was to share their home, he thought he would go back again, and try to bear the hard life a little longer, if it was only to help his mother, and tell her his father did care for them a bit in spite of his stern, hard ways. Perhaps Mrs. Coomber did not need to be told that her husband loved her and his children; at all events, she received Bob's information with a nod and a smile, and a whispered word. "Yer father's all right, and a rare good fisherman," she said; for in spite of the frequent unkindness she experienced, Mrs. Coomber was very fond of her husband. "Ah, he's a good fisherman, but he'd be all the better if he didn't have so much of that bottle," grumbled Bob; "he thinks a deal more about that than he does about us." It was true enough what Bob said. If his father could not by any chance get his bottle replenished, wife and children had a little respite from their usual hard, driving life, and he was more civil to their only neighbours, who were at the farm about half a mile off; but once the bottle got filled again, he grew sullen and morose, or quarrelsome. He had recently made himself very disagreeable to Farmer Hayes in one of his irritable fits, a fact which suddenly recurred to his wife when she heard of the sick child being brought home to her to nurse, but she dared not mention it to her husband. When Coomber brought the child that afternoon, he said, gaily: "Here's a present for yer from the sea, mother; maybe she'll bring us good luck coming as she did." "It 'ud be better luck if we'd picked up a boat," muttered Bob, who was standing near.