Not that I would have left home
at Christmas, and not that I lacked pleasure in the holidays. But other
fashions of games and speech and boyish etiquette lay between me and
Jem; hospitality, if not choice, kept him closely with his
school-fellows, and neither they nor he had part in the day-dreams of my
soul.
For the spell of the Penny Numbers had not grown weaker as I grew older.
In the holidays I came back to them as to friends. At school they made
the faded maps on Snuffy's dirty walls alive with visions, and many a
night as I lay awake with pain and over-weariness in the stifling
dormitory, my thoughts took refuge not in dreams of home nor in castles
of the air, but in phantom ships that sailed for ever round the world.
The day of the interview with my father I roused myself from my
grievances to consider a more practical question. Why should I not go to
sea? No matter whose fault it was, there was no doubt that I was
ill-educated, and that I did not please my father as Jem did. On the
other hand I was strong and hardy, nimble and willing to obey; and I had
roughed it enough, in all conscience.
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