l as usual?
When they used to lay me on the deck of the Dexter at night, because I
could not breathe below, I used to watch old Orion, who was my great
friend in the Loyalty Isles, and wish the heathen name had not stuck to
the old fellow, he always seemed so like the Christian warrior,
climbing up with his shield before him and his. A home like this is a
shield to a man in more ways than one, Mary. Hollo, was that the
street door?'

'Yes; Ritchie going home. Fancy his being at the silk all this time! I
am so sorry!'

Maugre her sorrow, there were few happier maidens in England than Mary
May, even though her service was distracted by the claims of three
slave-owners at once, bound as she was, to Ethel, by habitual fidelity,
to Harry, by eager adoration, to Blanche, by willing submission.
Luckily, their requisitions (for the most part unconscious) seldom
clashed, or, if they did, the two elders gave way, and the bride
asserted her supremacy in the plenitude of her youthful importance and
prosperity.

Thus she carried off Mary in her barouche to support her in the return
of bridal calls, while the others were organizing a walk to visit Flora
and the rifle target. Gertrude's enthusiasm was not equal to walking
with a weapon that might be loaded, nor to being ordered out to admire
the practice, so she accompanied the sisters; Tom was reading hard; and
Ethel found herself, Aubrey, and the sailor, the only ones ready to
start.

This was a decided treat, for Aubrey and she were so nearly one, that
it was almost a tete-a-tete with Harry, though it was not his way to
enter by daylight, and without strong impulse, on what regarded
himself, and there were no such confidences as those to Mary on the
previous night; but in talking over home details, it was easier to
speak without Tom's ironical ears and caustic tongue.

Among other details, the story of the summer that Ethel and Aubrey had
spent at Coombe was narrated, and Aubrey indulged himself by describing
what he called Ethel's conquest.

'It is more a conquest of Norman's, and of Melanesia,' said Ethel. 'If
it were not nonsense to build upon people's generous visions at
seventeen, I should sometimes hope a spark had been lit that would
shine some day in your islands, Harry.'

Going up that hill was not the place for Etheldred May to talk of the
futility of youthful aspirations, but it did not so strike either of
the brothers, to whom Cocksmoor had long been a fam