But Tom was neither to be hushed nor whished. "Tell my fayther to get up, and take Dick and Will with him to fetch the rest o' the brits and rays, while Jack and I have some breakfast, for we are hungry above a bit," he said; and he tumbled the fish out of the net, and told his mother they had left ten times as many in the crike. What cared Tom whether his father felt inclined to scold or not? He knew that the booty would silently and overwhelmingly plead his pardon. And oh, the trembling joy and pride of the poor mother,—her thoughts of large pecuniary relief and admiration of her child's noble act, combining, and causing her to prattle with so much elation that she scarcely knew what she said! Seven pounds, in sterling English money, Tom's poor father made of his child's night adventure: a sum he had never approached for one day's, no, nor one week's labour in his little boat, since he had possessed it. Need it be said that Tom's father was proud of him? He loved all his children: they and his wife were his jewels, his only idols in the world; and to picture truly his yearnings for their happiness, as he cast a thought towards his cottage, or counted his boys by their little red caps, toiling, meanwhile, afar off from the beach where the children straggled sometimes at great distances from each other, at their hardy employ,—to tell what truly exalted thinkings passed hourly through the mind of that poor fisherman, tossed upon the surge often a whole day without a fragment of gain, and yet clinging with glowing love to his wife and children on land,—oh, it would form a theme to kindle the sweetest eloquence of the gentle yet godlike Shakspere himself! But it was natural that Tom should become his father's peculiar pride, for he was, indeed, a child to be proud of.