Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/135

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CURRANT WINE
117

then the things he'd bring up to our house—heathen things, though they was real pretty, unloaded out o' the boxes right in our yard an' settin' in our house. But 't is mostly my father's comin' home I remember. He sailed fust as mate with my grandfather, an' then when gran'pa died, he was master. Why, when I was a young girl, afore I was married, I went a vy'age round the Horn with pa."

"Did you? Really?" Garth cried eagerly, looking up from the array of wonders on the table.

"I did, for sure," Mrs. Bassett said. "All of it I didn't enj'y greatly, but we visited very cur'ous lands. Yes, 't was interestin'; an' I do love a ship on the sea, an' the life aboard her."

"My grandfather was a sea-faring man, too," Garth observed, poring over the intricacies of a smooth sandal-wood puzzle.

"Was he, now?" Mrs. Bassett said encouragingly. Quimpaug was always on the alert for scraps of information about the Pemberleys.

"My father is going into the Navy," Garth told her; "but that isn't quite like being a real sea-captain. My great-grandfather was in the Navy, too, but it was before battleships stopped having sails. He commanded a frigate, and it