She informed me that Captain Butler had been exceedingly candid, had exactly named his savings and his patrimony, which scarcely amounted to three thousand pounds, and that he was deliberating whether or not to invest all that he had in a share of the new barque, _Arab Chief_. Mr. Johnstone had advised him, supposing he should be so fortunate as to gain my consent to marry him, not to make me his wife until he had gone his first voyage and seen how his venture fell out. ‘Your uncle,’ said my aunt, ‘is strongly of opinion that a man has no business to go and marry a fine handsome young woman like you, then leave her after a week or a month, and not set eyes on her again till he returns home from round the world.’ ‘I wish my uncle would mind his own business,’ said I, pouting, and feeling my face very long. But my aunt insisted that my uncle was right. She added that Captain Butler cordially agreed with him. Captain Butler’s own wish was to betroth himself to me, then to make his voyage; then return and marry me and carry me away with him to sea. My eyes sparkled, and I jumped up and walked the room greatly excited. But after this my aunt grew tedious. Was it imaginable that any sort of love fit to base so solemn an affair as marriage upon could exist between two people who had known each other a fortnight only? Here was I joyously avowing my love for Captain Butler and expressing the utmost eagerness to marry him. Did I know what I was talking about? Had I given a moment’s reflection to what marrying a sailor signified? I was rich, young, and handsome; I had a fine house of my own; I had liberty and health; I was without children to tease me, to pale me with midnight watchings, to burden my spirits with anxiety for their future. Should I not be giving myself away very cheaply by marrying a sea-captain, a respectable, good-looking man certainly, but poor, following a calling in which no one can make any sort of figure, an underpaid, perilous, beggarly vocation? She did not deny that Captain Butler came from a highly respectable stock. He had mentioned two members of his family whom Mr. Johnstone perfectly well knew by name. His father had been in the Royal Navy and had served under Collingwood and Lord Exmouth and had died a poor lieutenant.