t it."

He came back in about ten minutes, looking thoroughly fresh and clean.
In the meantime, his mother and sister had laid the table for supper.
It was not a very grand one, but more than usually abundant. There were
hot sausages and toast, and maybe butter, or what did duty for butter,
for it was very, very white, and tea, and some milk in a cream-jug.

"Well, I do feel as if I had been and done it right well!" exclaimed
Bill, as he stood in a blue check shirt which his mother had sent out to
him to put on after he had washed.

"Now, Bill, do try this on," she said, handing him a pair of trousers.
They fitted nicely round the waist; no braces were needed. Then she
made him put his arms into the jacket, and fasten a black silk
handkerchief round his neck with a sailor's knot. And then his sister
came behind, and clapped on a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, with a
long ribbon round it, hanging down on one side.

"There! There! How well he does look!"

"Bill, you do, darling!" exclaimed his mother. "Every inch a sailor.
Bless you, Bill!" His brothers and sisters made some of these remarks,
and many others; and came round, taking him by the hand, or patting him
on the back, and Bill stood by smiling and well pleased. He had never
in his life been so nicely dressed. Then they brought him a pair of low
shoes. He thought them rather incumbrances, but he put them on for the
honour of the thing; and they had broad ribbon bows in front, and did
look very natty, to be sure.

In their eagerness they almost forgot the sausages, which were somewhat
overdone--burnt all on one side; but that did not matter much, and at
length they all sat down, and while they were laughing and talking, the
sausages hissed and spluttered in return, as much as to say, "We are all
ready; we wish you would eat us. You look so merry and happy, and
perhaps we shall be merry and happy too."

Bill at first could not eat much for thinking that at last he was going
on board a man-of-war. No more could his mother, but when the rest
began to eat away, he followed their example; and his mother at last
managed to get down the remaining sausage, which all her children
insisted she should have, Susan giving it a fresh heating up before the
fire, for they had a good fire that day. Many a winter's evening they
had had to go without it, for want of something to burn. At last there
was not as much left as a piece of grease in the dish, nor a piec