Chapter 14 - Page 2

old enough to be told plainly
about it. But I should like to know now, if I may--if it does not
give you too much pain to speak about it.'

'Pain! No,' replied Mrs. Hale, her cheek flushing. 'Yet it is
pain to think that perhaps I may never see my darling boy again.
Or else he did right, Margaret. They may say what they like, but
I have his own letters to show, and I'll believe him, though he
is my son, sooner than any court-martial on earth. Go to my
little japan cabinet, dear, and in the second left-hand drawer
you will find a packet of letters.'

Margaret went. There were the yellow, sea-stained letters, with
the peculiar fragrance which ocean letters have: Margaret carried
them back to her mother, who untied the silken string with
trembling fingers, and, examining their dates, she gave them to
Margaret to read, making her hurried, anxious remarks on their
contents, almost before her daughter could have understood what
they were.

'You see, Margaret, how from the very first he disliked Captain
Reid. He was second lieutenant in the ship--the Orion--in which
Frederick sailed the very first time. Poor little fellow, how
well he looked in his midshipman's dress, with his dirk in his
hand, cutting open all the newspapers with it as if it were a
paper-knife! But this Mr. Reid, as he was then, seemed to take a
dislike to Frederick from the very beginning. And then--stay!
these are the letters he wrote on board the Russell. When he was
appointed to her, and found his old enemy Captain Reid in
command, he did mean to bear all his tyranny patiently. Look!
this is the letter. Just read it, Margaret. Where is it he
says--Stop--'my father may rely upon me, that I will bear with
all proper patience everything that one officer and gentleman can
take from another. But from my former knowledge of my present
captain, I confess I look forward with apprehension to a long
course of tyranny on board the Russell.' You see, he promises to
bear patiently, and I am sure he did, for he was the
sweetest-tempered boy, when he was not vexed, that could possibly
be. Is that the letter in which he speaks of Captain Reid's
impatience with the men, for not going through the ship's
manoeuvres as quickly as the Avenger? You see, he says that they
had many new hands on board the Russell, while the Avenger had
been nearly three years on the station, with nothing to do but to
keep slavers off, and work her men, till they ran up and down the
rigging like rats or monkeys.'

Margaret slowly read the letter, half illegible through the
fading of the ink. It might be--it probably was--a statement of
Captain Reid's imperiousness in trifles, very much exaggerated by
the narrator, who had written it while