He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him,
by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a thick-headed,
unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything
to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name,
living or dead.

He had been several years at sea, and had, in the course of those removals
to which all midshipmen are liable, and especially such midshipmen
as every captain wishes to get rid of, been six months on board
Captain Frederick Wentworth's frigate, the Laconia; and from the Laconia
he had, under the influence of his captain, written the only two letters
which his father and mother had ever received from him during the whole
of his absence; that is to say, the only two disinterested letters;
all the rest had been mere applications for money.

In each letter he had spoken well of his captain; but yet,
so little were they in the habit of attending to such matters,
so unobservant and incurious were they as to the names of men or ships,
that it had made scarcely any impression at the time; and that Mrs Musgrove
should have been suddenly struck, this very day, with a recollection
of the name of Wentworth, as connected with her son, seemed one of those
extraordinary bursts of mind which do sometimes occur.

She had gone to her letters, and found it all as she supposed;
and the re-perusal of these letters, after so long an interval,
her poor son gone for ever, and all the strength of his faults forgotten,
had affected her spirits exceedingly, and thrown her into
greater grief for him than she had know on first hearing of his death.
Mr Musgrove was, in a lesser degree, affected likewise; and when