"I knew pretty well what she was before that day;" said he, smiling.

"I had no more discoveries to make than you would have as to the

fashion and strength of any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about

among half your acquaintance ever since you could remember, and which

at last, on some very wet day, is lent to yourself. Ah! she was a dear

old Asp to me. She did all that I wanted. I knew she would. I knew

that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be

the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time

I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very

entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn,

to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted. I brought her into

Plymouth; and here another instance of luck. We had not been six hours

in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights,

and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time; our touch

with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition.

Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant

Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the

newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought

about me." Anne's shudderings were to herself alone; but the Miss

Musgroves could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations

of pity and horror.

"And so then, I suppose," said Mrs Musgrove, in a low voice, as if

thinking aloud, "so then he went away to the Laconia, and there he met

with our poor boy. Charles, my dear," (beckoning him to her), "do ask

Captain Wentworth where it was he first met with your poor brother. I

always forgot."

"It was at Gibraltar, mother, I know. Dick had been left ill at

Gibraltar, with a recommendation from his former captain to Captain

Wentworth."

"Oh! but, Charles, tell Captain Wentworth, he need not be afraid of

mentioning poor Dick before me, for it would be rather a pleasure to

hear him talked of by such a good friend."

Charles, being somewhat more mindful of the probabilities of the case,

only nodded in reply, and walked away.

The girls were now hunting for the Laconia; and Captain Wentworth could

not deny himself the pleasure of taking the precious volume into his

own hands to save them the trouble, and once more read aloud the little

statement of her name and rate, and present non-commissioned class,

observing over it that she too had been one of the best friends man

ever had.




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