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Shadrach was a religious and scrupulous man, who respected his word as his life, Shortly afterwards the wedding took place, Jolliffe having conveyed to Emily as gently as possible the error he had fallen into when estimating Joanna’s mood as one of indifference.

A month after the marriage Joanna’s mother died, and the couple were obliged to turn their attention to very practical matters. Now that she wag left without a parent, Joanna could not bear the notion of her husband going to sea again; but the question was, What could he do at home? They finally decided to take on a grocer’s shop in the high street, the goodwill and stock of which were waiting to be disposed of at that time. Shadrach knew nothing of shopkeeping, and Joanna very little, but they hoped to learn.

To the management of this grocery business they now devoted all their energies, and continued to conduct it for many succeeding years, without great success. Two sons were born to them, whom their nother loved to idolatry, although she had never paasionately loved her husband; and she lavished upon them all her forethought and care. But the shop did not thrive, and the large dreams she had entertained of her sons’ education and career became attenuated in the face of realities, Their achooling was of the plainest, but, being by the sea, they grew alert in all auch nautical arts and enterprises as were attractive to their age.

The great interest of the Jolliffes’ married life, outside their own immediate household, had lain in the marriage of Emily. By one of those odd chances