existed.

James Walsham was, indeed, the son of the late doctor of the village,
who had died two years previously. Dr. Walsham had been clever in his
profession, but circumstances were against him. Sidmouth and its
neighbourhood were so healthy, that his patients were few and far
between; and when he died, of injuries received from being thrown over
his horse's head, when the animal one night trod on a stone coming down
the hill into Sidmouth, his widow and son were left almost penniless.

Mrs. Walsham was, fortunately, an energetic woman, and a fortnight
after her husband's death, she went round among the tradesmen of the
place and the farmers of the neighbourhood, and announced her intention
of opening a school for girls. She had received a good education, being
the daughter of a clergyman, and she soon obtained enough pupils to
enable her to pay her way, and to keep up the pretty home in which her
husband lived in the outskirts of Sidmouth.

If she would have taken boarders, she could have obtained far higher
terms, for good schools were scarce; but this she would not do, and her
pupils all lived within distances where they could walk backwards and
forwards to their homes. Her evenings she devoted to her son, and,
though the education which she was enabled to give him would be
considered meagre, indeed, in these days of universal cramming, he
learned as much as the average boy of the period.

He would have learned more had he followed her desires, and devoted the
time when she was engaged in teaching to his books; but this he did not
do. For a few hours in the day he would work vigorously at his lessons.
The rest of his time he spent either on the seashore, or in the boats