to the heart of a healthy lad. Whether, could he have had his way, David would have cast his lot with the privateers—who were but pirates under a more polite title—or with those who sought to suppress them, I do not know!
When they returned to the house, Master William Elkins had returned and they sat down to supper. David’s uncle was a somewhat pompous man of forty-odd, very proper as to dress and deportment, and who ruled his household with a stern hand. Yet withal he was kind of heart and secretly held David in much affection. Since his wife’s death the domestic affairs had been looked after by a certain Mistress Fairdaye, who occupied a position midway between that of servant and housewife, taking her meals with the family and ruling in her own realm quite as inflexbly as Master Elkins commanded over all. David often pitied Raph, for what between his father and Mistress Fairdaye he spent what seemed to the younger lad a very dreary and suppressed existence. But Raph appeared not to mind it. Indeed, unlike David, he had little of the adventurous in his makeup and restraint did not irk him. He was a rather thick-set youth, quiet in manner and
