A Sailors Lass | Page 5

happy family, for the fisherman was a stern,
hard man by nature, and since he had lost his little girl he had become
harder, his neighbours said. At all events, his wife and children grew
more afraid of him--afraid of provoking his stern displeasure by any of
those little playful raids children so delight in; and every one of them
looked forward to the day when they could run away from home and go
to sea, as their grown-up brother had done. Bob, the eldest now at home,
was already contemplating taking this step very soon, and had
promised to help Dick and Tom when they were old enough. It had
been a startling revelation to Bob to hear his father speak as he had
done on the beach at Fellness about his brother, for he had long ago
decided that his father did not care a pin for any of them, unless it was
for the baby sister who had died, and even of that he was not quite sure.
He had made up his mind, as he walked through the storm that morning,
that he would not go back again, but make his way to Grimsby, or some
other seaport town, after his business at Fellness was done. But what he
had heard on the beach from his father somewhat shook his purpose,
and when he learned from Dame Peters afterwards, that the child they
had rescued was to share their home, he thought he would go back
again, and try to bear the hard life a little longer, if it was only to help
his mother, and tell her his father did care for them a bit in spite of his
stern, hard ways.
Perhaps Mrs. Coomber did not need to be told that her husband loved

her and his children; at all events, she received Bob's information with
a nod and a smile, and a whispered word. "Yer father's all right, and a
rare good fisherman," she said; for in spite of the frequent unkindness
she experienced, Mrs. Coomber was very fond of her husband.
"Ah, he's a good fisherman, but he'd be all the better if he didn't have so
much of that bottle," grumbled Bob; "he thinks a deal more about that
than he does about us."
It was true enough what Bob said. If his father could not by any chance
get his bottle replenished, wife and children had a little respite from
their usual hard, driving life, and he was more civil to their only
neighbours, who were at the farm about half a mile off; but once the
bottle got filled again, he grew sullen and morose, or quarrelsome. He
had recently made himself very disagreeable to Farmer Hayes in one of
his irritable fits, a fact which suddenly recurred to his wife when she
heard of the sick child being brought home to her to nurse, but she
dared not mention it to her husband. When Coomber brought the child
that afternoon, he said, gaily: "Here's a present for yer from the sea,
mother; maybe she'll bring us good luck coming as she did."
"It 'ud be better luck if we'd picked up a boat," muttered Bob, who was
standing near.
"Why, she ain't such a baby as you said," exclaimed Mrs. Coomber, as
she unpinned the shawl in which she was wrapped; "she is about five."
"Five years old," repeated Coomber; "but she'd talk if she was as old as
that, and Dame Peters told me she'd just laid like a dead thing ever
since she'd been there."
"She's ill, that's what it is, poor little mite--ill and frightened out of her
senses;" and Mrs. Coomber gathered her in her arms, and kissed the
little white lips, and pressed her to her bosom, as only a tender mother
can, while the boys stood round in wondering silence, and Coomber
dashed a tear from his eye as he thought of the little daughter lying in
Fellness churchyard. But he was ashamed of the love that prompted this
feeling, and said hastily: "Now, mother, we mustn't begin by spoiling

her;" but then he turned away, and called Bob to go with him and look
after the boat.
For several days the child continued very ill--too ill to notice anything,
or to attempt to talk; but one day, when she was lying on Mrs.
Coomber's lap before the fire, the boys mutely looking at her as she lay,
she suddenly put up her little hands, and said in a feeble whisper, "Dear
faver Dod, tate tare o' daddy and mammy, and Tiny;" and then she
seemed to drop off into a doze.
The boys were startled, and Mrs. Coomber looked down hastily at the
little form on her lap, for this was the first