beautifullest parrot and the talkingest you ever see, and the red shawl all
worked over with flowers: I'll show it to you some day, sir, when you have
time. He made that ship you see in the frame there, sir, all with his own
knife, out on a bit o' wood that he got at the Marishes, as they calls it,
sir--a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea. But the parrot's
gone dead like the rest of them, sir.--Where am I? and what am I talking
about?" she added, looking down at her knitting as if she had dropped
a stitch, or rather as if she had forgotten what she was making, and
therefore what was to come next.

"You were telling me how you used to think of the sea--"

"When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
time--lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it du
call it falling asleep, don't it, sir?"

"The Bible certainly does," I answered.

"It's the Bible I be meaning, of course," she returned. "Well, after that,
but I don't know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
something that took away things and didn't bring them no more. And somehow
or other she never look so blue after that, and she give me the shivers.
But now, sir, she always looks to me like one o' the shining ones that come
to fetch the pilgrims. You've heard tell of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, I
daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by
a tinker, though there be a power o' good things in it that I think the
gentlefolk would like if they knowed it."

"I do know the book--nearly as well as I know the Bible," I answered; "and
the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of the