"There's nothing I shall do so well at as farming, father," remonstrated Jack. "You can put me for three or four years to some good agriculturist, and I'll be bound at the end of the time I should be fit to manage the largest and best farm in the country. Why, I am a better farmer now than some of them are." "Jack, my boy, you must not be self-willed. I cannot let you be a farmer." "Then send me to sea, father, and make a sailor of me," returned Jack, with undisturbed good humour. But this startled the parson. He liked Jack, and he had a horror of the sea. "Not that, Jack, my boy. Anything but that." "I'm not sure but I should like the sea better than farming," went on Jack, the idea full in his head. "Aunt Dean lent me 'Peter Simple' one day. I know I should make a first-rate sailor." "Jack, don't talk so. Your poor mother would not have liked it, and I don't like it; and I shall never let you go." "Some fellows run away to sea," said Jack, laughing. The parson felt as though a bucket of cold water had been thrown down his back. Did Jack mean that as a threat? "John," said he, in as solemn a way as he had ever spoken, "disobedience to parents sometimes brings a curse with it. You must promise me that you will never go to sea." "I'll not promise that, off-hand," said Jack. "But I will promise never to go without your consent. Think it well over, father; there's no hurry." It was on the tip of Mr. Lewis's tongue to withdraw his objection to the farming scheme then and there: in comparison with the other it looked quite fair and bright. But he thought he might compromise his judgment to yield thus instantly: and, as easy Jack said, there was no hurry. So Jack went rushing out of doors again to the uttermost bounds of the parish, and the parson was left to Aunt Dean. When he told her he meant to let Jack be a farmer, she laughed till the tears came into her eyes, and begged him to leave matters to her. _She_ knew how to manage boys, without appearing directly to cross them: there was this kind of trouble with most boys, she had observed, before they settled satisfactorily in life, but it all came right in the end. So the parson said no more about farming: but Jack talked a great deal about the sea. Mr. Lewis went over in his gig to Worcester, and bought a book he had heard of, "Two Years before the Mast." He wrote Jack's name in it and gave it him, hoping its contents might serve to sicken him of the sea. The next morning the book was missing. Jack looked high and low for it, but it was gone. He had left it on the sitting-room table when he went up to bed, and it mysteriously disappeared during the night. The servants had not seen it, and declared it was not on the table in the morning. "It could not--I suppose--have been the cat," observed Aunt Dean, in a doubtful manner, her eyes full of wonder as to where the book could have got to. "I have heard of cats doing strange things."