ome down one night soon arter you fell overboard," replied the
old man. "Very polite they was, and they asked me to go and see 'em any
time I liked. I ain't much of a one for seeing people, but I did go one
night 'bout two or three months ago, end o' March, I think it was, to a
pub wot they 'ave at Chelsea, to see whether they 'ad heard anything of
'im."

"Ah!" interjected the listener.

"They was very short about it," continued Ben, sourly; "the old party
got that excited she could 'ardly keep still, but the young lady she
said good riddance to bad rubbish, she ses. She hoped as 'ow he'd be
punished."

Flower started, and then smiled softly to himself.

"Perhaps she's found somebody else," he said.

Ben grunted.

"I shouldn't wonder, she seemed very much took up with a young feller
she called Arthur," he said, slowly; "but that was the last I see of
'em; they never even offered me a drink, and though they'd ask me to go
down any time I liked, they was barely civil. The young lady didn't seem
to me to want Arthur to 'ear about it."

He stitched away resentfully, and his listener, after a fond look round
his old quarters, bade him good-night and went ashore again. For a
little while he walked up and down the road, pausing once to glance at
the bright drawn blind in the Gibsons' window, and then returned home.
Captain Barber and his wife were at cribbage, and intent upon the game.

With the morning sun his spirits rose, and after a hurried breakfast he
set off for the station and booked to Bittlesea. The little platform was
bright with roses, and the air full of the sweetness of an early morning
in June. He watched the long line stretching away until it was lost in a
bend of the road, and thought out ways and means of obtaining a private
interview with the happy bridegroom; a subject which occupied him long
after the train had started, as he was benevolently anxious not to mar
his friend's happiness by a display of useless grief and temper on the
part of the bride.

The wedding party left the house shortly before his arrival at the
station, after a morning of excitement and suspense which had
tried Messrs. Smith and Green to the utmost, both being debarred by
self-imposed etiquette from those alluring liquids by which in other
circumstances they would have soothed their nerves. They strolled
restlessly about with Tommy, for whom they had suddenly conceived
an ardent affection, and who, to do him justice, was ta