t him
once or twice such looks that there was no sleep for him for ever so
long. What did she say? Why, she never opened her pouting lips to show
those even pearly teeth. She only looked out of those soft blue eyes.
That was all!

"Mr. Darcantel, I think of getting married."

"The d---- you do! And who to, pray?"

"Why," said Mr. Mouse, as he rolled over and kicked the sheet off his
slate-pencil built legs, "I haven't made up my mind; but do you know
that that pretty girl up there at the big house has taken quite a fancy
to me, and when you were presented to her mother she gave me _such_ a
squeeze of the hand! Oh my!"

Here Mr. Mouse's narrative was cut short by a pillow hitting him plump
on the mouth, clean through his musquito net.

"Very charming young lady, Mr. Mouse," said a quiet voice, in a cool
tone, on the other side of him; "she did seem to take a violent fancy to
you."

Mr. Mouse rolled over, and then, sitting up in his cot, replied, "Yes,
sir! and that was her mother sitting by you when the big nigger in white
capsized the wine over your sleeve, and nearly pulled your a--hair
off."

Look out, Mr. Mouse! If that man there beside you once gives a twitch at
your curls, he'll pull something more than hair--perhaps a little scalp
with it!

"Oh!" was the sound that came back.

"Yes, sir; and the other beautiful lady next the commodore is her
sister. She had a son just mademoiselle's age, who was murdered by
pirates off Jamaica ever so many years ago, and Commodore Cleveland
chased them in a ship he was first lieutenant of--my father commanded
the ship--she was the old 'Scourge.'"

"Hold your tongue!" came from the cot where the spare pillow was thrown
from.

"Ho!" said the military chieftain; but if the room had not been so dark,
the way his eyes opened and emitted an icy glare of surprise would have
made Tiny Mouse shiver with cold.

"Oh dear, yes, colonel, I heard the commodore tell all about it the
other night on board the frigate. He thought I was asleep, but I kept
awake through the best part of it."

"The best part of it?"

"Why, sir, how an old one-eyed Spaniard deceived my father, and sent
him on a fool's errand from St. Jago down to the Isle of Pines, and
afterward how the 'Scourge' chased the piratical schooner in a hurricane
for ever so long, clear away to the coast of Darien, where they blew her
out of water, and killed every scoundrel on board!"

Not every one, Mr. Mouse. There i