“Ah! Miss Anne, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare say he would have been just such another by this time.”

Anne suppressed a smile, and listened kindly, while Mrs. Musgrove relieved her heart a little more; and for a few minutes, therefore, could not keep pace with the conversation of the others.

When she could let her attention take its natural course again, she found the Miss Musgroves just fetching the Navy List (their own navy list, the first that had ever been at Uppercross), and sitting down together to pore over it, with the professed view of finding out the ships which Captain Wentworth had commanded.

“Your first was the Asp , I remember; we will look for the Asp .”