In future, Dodd was to command one of the Company's large
steamers to Alexandria and back.
"It is rather a come-down for a sailor, to go straight ahead like a
wheelbarrow in all weathers with a steam-pot and a crew of coalheavers
But then I shall not be parted from my sweetheart such long dreary spells
as I have been thus twenty years, my dear love: so is it for me to
complain?"
The second topic was pecuniary; the transfer of their savings from India,
where interest was higher than at home, but the capital not so secure.
And the third was ardent and tender expressions of affection for the wife
and children he adored. These effusions of the heart had no separate
place, except in my somewhat arbitrary analysis of the honest sailor's
letter; they were the under current. Mrs. Dodd read part of it out to
Julia; in fact all but the money matter: that concerned the heads of the
family more immediately; and Cash was a topic her daughter did not
understand, nor care about. And when Mrs. Dodd had read it with
glistening eyes, she kissed it tenderly, and read it all over again to
herself, and then put it into her bosom as naively as a milkmaid in love.
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