CHAPTER TWO.: MY FATHER DOES WHAT MOST SAILORS DO—HE MAKES A FOOLISH MARRIAGE, ONE OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHICH IS BROUGHT TO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER.

I HAVE OBSERVED AT THE finale of my first chapter, that at last my mother and father came to a good understanding; but at the same time Madam Araminta (for so my mother insisted upon being called) took good care to let my father understand that she considered that she was lowering herself by surrendering up her charms to a captain’s coxswain. She informed him that her father might be said to have been royally connected, being a king’s messenger (and so, indeed, he might be considered, having been a twopenny postman), and that her mother had long scores against the first nobles in the land (she was a milk-woman), and that she had dry-nursed a young baronet, and was now, not merely a ladies’ maid, but a lady’s ladies’ maid. All this important and novel communication sunk deep in