'We know, father, about it,' Theo's quiet voice was saying. 'Mrs. Vesey guessed you might just possibly forget the message, so she sent me a note, next day. It's all arranged, and we are all going. Father, dear, wouldn't it be possible for you to come with us too?' The girl had left her seat at the head of the table, and came round to lean on the back of her father's chair. It seemed to Theo that if the captain could be induced to join his family's life-pleasures, he would come, in time, to be a refuge and a help in their life-troubles also; so she pleaded. 'Tut! tut! tut! Don't be absurd, my dear Theo. It's quite unlike you. I thought you, at least, understood what a life full of urgent importance mine is, until the _magnum opus_ is achieved. After that--well, well, we'll see!' 'Yes, but, dear, just one little holiday! I know the book is a great labour, but you might take one afternoon from your work, and come with us--just for once!' 'No, no, child! When a man has put his hand to the plough he has no right to turn back. And you ought to know better than tempt me, I say. But with regard to you young people it is very different; you haven't a care, so you can't do better than be happy, that is, at the appointed time. There's a time for everything, the Book says, doesn't it? Now then, my dear, let me get away back to my work, if you please.' The fiery old sailor held a firm conviction that he had an imperative duty to perform in this world, in the shape of his proposed literary work. Duty had been, hitherto, the sailor's god through thick and thin. To do him justice, the captain had not the faintest notion of the gusts of rebellious discontent that often enough swept over the little household he imagined to be so well ordered. Deeply attached to his boys and girls, one and all, though he was, he took no heed of the fact that the minds of the mere children, as he considered them to be, were fast awaking up--growing apace with their youthful bodies. The truth was, the young folk were utter strangers and foreigners to the man who had married late in life. So long as his gentle, tender wife--a woman eminently fitted for her niche in life by her sweet nature and her heart filled with Christian grace--lived, the captain's children were well cared for indeed. Their needs both of body and soul were alike looked after. But the mother who was so qualified by her rare sweetness to bring up the children God had given her 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' was called away to a higher, fuller life 'beyond these voices'; and the sailor, taking the reins of the household in his unaccustomed fingers, held them over-slackly. CHAPTER XII IN THE FAR NORTH It was June, the 'leafy month': Nature was dressed out in her newest and freshest of robes, and the homes of her feathered children were peopled with tiny birdlings, all agape with hunger and curiosity.