Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CONTINUATION OF KIT'S TARN OF THE LONE MOTHER AND CHILD — HER STORT. KALLISAH.—FELIX. — NEW ASSOCIATES. The next evening, when the two young Swallows were comfortably ensconced in the old mariner's cottage, Dick snugly crouching on one side of him, and Fanny hugging his other arm as usual, Kit thus resumed his yarn, where the lone mother was beginning to tell him her story. " ' My first misfortunes began,' she said, ' with the loss of my poor mother, who was sickly and weak- spirited, and unable to contend with the grief of discovering that her husband was an habitual drunkard. He had contrived to deceive her with regard to this defect in his character until after their marriage ; but when once he had gained his point in inducing her to become his wife, he had relapsed into his usual excesses, and brought her to an early grave with shame and regret before I had reached the age of six years. My second calamity was my father's marrying again, and giving me for a step-mother a hard, cruel woman, who ill-used me, and made me little better than a servant to her own children, who were bom in rapid succession after her union with my father. On this little family I had to wait from morning till night, endure all their caprices, and abide by their ill-tempers, tlieir mother's exactions, and my father's injustice. I sunk into a mere abject drudge, and was so broken-spirited, that when, at the age of eighteen, I found that I had engaged the attention and sympathy of a young midshipman who came to lodge at the house next door tcf that in which we lived, and that he often took occasion to talk to me and manifest an interest in my fate, I could only at first conclude that he was jeering at me, and mocking my suffering by a pretended kindness and solicitude. Soon, howeve...