instead of being a canal-carrier, and I am sure it pleased them to
think that Mrs. Johnson's father had been a navy captain, and that his
portrait--uniform and all--hung over the horsehair sofa in the
dining-room, near the window where the yellow roses used to come in.

If I could get the room to myself, I used to kneel on the sofa, on one
of the bolsters, and gaze at the faded little picture till I lost my
balance on the slippery horsehair from the intensity of my interest in
the hero of Johnson Minor's tales. Every time, I think, I expected to
see some change in the expression of the captain's red face, adapting
it better to what, by his grandson's account, his character must have
been. It seemed so odd he should look so wooden after having seen so
much.

The captain had been a native of South Devon.

"Raleigh, Drake, my grandfather, and lots of other great sailors were
born in Devonshire," Johnson said. He certainly did brag; but he spoke
so slowly and quietly, that it did not sound as like bragging as it
would have done if he had talked faster, I think.

The captain had lived at Dartmouth, and of this place Johnson gave me
such descriptions, that to this day the name of Dartmouth has a
romantic sound in my ears, though I know now that all the marvels were
Johnson's own invention, and barely founded upon the real quaintness
of the place, of which he must have heard from his mother. It became
the highest object of my ambition to see the captain's native city.
That there must be people--shopkeepers, for instance, and a man to
keep the post office--who lived there all along, was a fact that I
could not realize sufficiently to envy them.