The parson, hearing rumour of this from Mrs. Curnow, the housekeeper, ventured to come up and argue the point with his patron over a game of piquet. But the Admiral listened only to the first few words.
'Let her be brought up well or ill,' he said, laying down his cards and fixing the parson with an unwinking, parrot-like stare, 'she bides here alone with me. The matter is settled. The housekeeper can teach her her needle. There's Mistress Trevannion yonder who, I'll wager, will know when she wants a new petticoat. You and I will see to her books.'
And that, Mr. Stowe found, was the end of the argument; but the Admiral, roused (though he would not have confessed it) to the sense of his child's needs, bestirred himself.
The carrier brought down from a book-stall at the sign of the _Three Bibles_ on London Bridge, a box of school books, French and Latin. On these volumes, which the small pupil turned over in unfeigned dislike, the parson nodded approval. 'Must I learn all these?' asked Marion, her mouth down at the corners. 'I had far rather play with you, Father.'
'And my daughter be brought up as unlearned as a kitchen-wench?' retorted the Admiral.
The child pondered. 'Did my mother know all these books?' she asked.
'She did,' said the Admiral, his great voice breaking. 'She was wiser than your father.'
Here the parson bethought himself. 'But the English reading, sir,' he said. 'There's nothing here but foreign tongues.'
His patron pointed to the two volumes that constituted his own library: Hakluyt's Voyages and Plutarch's Lives. 'And there is the Bible and Master Shakespeare's works in her mother's room above,' he said. 'If she thrives not on these she thrives not at all.'
The lessons began, and brought with them a new and secret joy for the Admiral. He had never been much of a school man, and his knowledge of Latin and French grammar was slight. True, he spoke the French language with ease, and failed not to hector the parson on the subject of accent; but he soon found that in grammar he must needs be a pupil instead of tutor, as he had originally stated to Mr. Stowe. The Admiral and Marion, sitting side by side, conned their declensions together, the seaman's double bass and the child's pipe blended. In this duet the slender clear notes were so often drowned that the parson plucked up courage to remonstrate.
