Much about this time aunt received a letter from her son Will. This, too, was addressed from sea. We had heard from him from Plymouth--a few brief lines--and not since. He wrote that they had met with fearful weather in the Channel, and he believed that he had mistaken his calling; he would swap all his fine notions of starting on a career and seeing the world for one hour of the comfortable parlour near the Tower and a good dinner of roast beef and cauliflower. ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ said he. ‘The captain is stern and like a sentry. You mustn’t speak to him. The second mate is a bit of a bully, big, strong, and noisy. You never saw such beef as they serve out in all your life! The oldest sailor on board swears he never recollects worse pork, and they say that before we’re up with the Cape the bread for ship’s use will be all alive--oh!’ ‘All first voyagers write like that,’ said my uncle, returning the letter to his wife; ‘before Will is a fortnight at home he’ll be making our lives a burden with his regrets and lamentations that his ship doesn’t sail sooner.’ CHAPTER VIII SHE RECEIVES DREADFUL NEWS The weeks went by. Day after day I eagerly expected to receive a letter from Tom, making sure that he would grasp every chance to send me his love and blessing and all the news about himself from those high seas on which he was still afloat. But no letter reached me, ‘simply because,’ Mr. Johnstone explained, ‘your Tom has not been fortunate enough to fall in with a homeward-bound ship. You may often sail for many days upon the sea, so I’ve heard your father say, without sighting a vessel. When you hear from Tom it will be from Rio.’ But how I missed him! We had been incessantly together for nearly four months. The weeks might roll by, but there was no magic in the time they contained to weaken my sense of loss. I lived very quietly, was much in my own home, where I sought to pass the hours by reading and drawing. I took a kind of dislike to company, and refused a number of invitations to quadrille and card parties and the like. It was my delight to shape my conduct and habits by the fancy of such wishes as I knew my sweetheart would express were he with me. My memory of him, my love for him, lay in a spirit of control upon my heart. All impulse, all desire was governed by the many gentle, noble counsels he had wrapped up in our long, sweet, quiet talks together, when we rambled in the outskirts or took oars upon the river. Never was man more truly loved than was Tom. My aunt particularly noticed the change in me, and said that Tom’s courtship had done me a very great deal of good.