eet.
In the counting-house he found his sister closeted with Mr. Benny, and a
pile of bills on the table between. Mrs. Purchase rose and greeted him
with a little pecking kiss. She was a cheerful body, by some five or six
years his junior, with a handsome weather-tanned face, eyes wrinkled at
the corners like a seaman's, and two troubles in the world--the first
being that she had borne no children. She shared her husband's voyaging,
kept the ship's accounts, was known to all on board as "The Bos'un," and
when battened under hatches in foul weather spent her time in trimming the
most wonderful bonnets. Her coquetry stopped short at bonnets.
To-day indeed--the weather being warm--in lieu of bodice she had slipped
on a grey alpaca coat of her husband's.

"Good-evening, John!" She plunged at once into a narrative of the passage
home--how they had picked up a slant off Heligoland and carried it with
them well past the Wight; how on this side of Portland they had met with
slight and baffling head-winds, and for two days had done little more than
drift with the tides. The vessel was foul with weed, and must go into
dock. "You could graze a cow on her for a fortnight," Mrs. Purchase
declared. "Benny and I have just finished checking the bills.
You'd like to run through them?"

"Let be," said Rosewarne. "I'll cast an eye over them to-night maybe."
He stepped to the bell-rope and rang for his jug of cider.

Some touch of fatigue in the movement, some slight greyness in his face,
caught Mrs. Purchase's sisterly eye.

"It's my belief you're unwell, John."

"Weary, my dear Hannah--weary; that's all." He turned to the little
clerk. "That will do for to-night, Benny. You can leave all the papers
as they are, just putting these bills together in a heap. Is that the
correspondence? Very well; I'll deal with it."

"In all my life I never heard you own to feeling tired," persisted Mrs.
Purchase, as Mr. Benny closed the door behind him. "You may take my word
for it, you're unwell; been sleeping in some damp bed, belike."

Rosewarne moved to the window and gazed out across the garden.
Down by the yew-hedge, where a narrow path of turf wound in and out among
beds of tall Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells, the two children were
playing a solemn game of follow-my-leader, the blind boy close on his
sister's heels, she turning again and again to watch that he came to no
harm.

"I wonder if that boy could be trained and