"Where is your father, boy?"
"He and two brothers were drowned out at Spithead, last autumn,"
answered Bill.
"Ah! I will have a talk with your mother, one of these days; I think I
know her. Be a good boy meantime," said the officer, and he rode away
up the street.
Bill looked after him, thinking when "one of these days" would come, and
what would come out of the talk.
Several days passed by, and Bill heard nothing of the captain. His
clothes became more and more tattered, and, though his mother mended
them at night, they were so rotten that they often got torn again the
next day. Winter came. Times were indeed hard with him. He grew
thinner and thinner. Still, whenever he got a penny, he shared it with
those he loved at home. "Never say die," was his motto; "it is a long
lane which has no turning," and "a dull day when the sun does not shine
out before the evening." With such expressions he used to cheer and
comfort his mother, though, in spite of all trials, she was not often
disposed to be more cast down than he was.
"Don't give way, mother," Bill used to say, when, on coming home in the
evening, she looked sadder than usual. "Just remember what the parson
said: `The sun is shining up above the clouds every day in the year, and
he is sure to break through them and shine upon us some time or other;
and God is looking down at all times through them, let them be ever so
thick, and never forgets us.'"
Still Bill could not help wishing that the kind captain had remembered,
as he said he would, and made that some day or other arrive rather more
quickly than there appeared a likelihood of its doing.