ow are you?"

The overcoat with the fur trimmings came off, and, with the hat, the
cane, and the gloves, was laid upon a chair, and Burke and Mrs. Cliff
sat down to talk over old times and old friends.

CHAPTER VI

A TEMPERANCE LARK

As Mrs. Cliff sat and talked with George Burke, she forgot the
calculations she had been making, she forgot her perplexities and her
anxieties concerning the rapid inroads which her income was making upon
her ability to dispose of it, in the recollection of the
good-fellowships which the presence of her companion recalled.

But Mr. Burke could give her no recent news of Captain Horn and Edna,
she having heard from them later than he had; and the only one of the
people of the _Castor_ of whom he could tell her was Edward Shirley, who
had gone into business.

He had bought a share in a shipyard, and, as he was a man who had a
great idea about the lines of a vessel, and all that sort of thing, he
had determined to put his money into that business. He was a long-headed
fellow, and Burke had no doubt but that he would soon hear of some fine
craft coming from the yard of his old shipmate.

"But how about yourself, Mr. Burke? I want to know what has happened to
you, and what you intend doing, and how you chanced to be coming this
way."

"Oh, I will tell you everything that has happened to me," said Mr.
Burke, "and it won't take long; but first let me ask you something, Mrs.
Cliff?" and as he spoke he quietly rose and shut the parlor door.

"Now then," said he, as he seated himself, "we have all been in the same
box, or, I should say, in the same boxes of different kinds, and
although I may not have the right to call myself a friend, I am just as
friendly to you as if I was, and feel as if people who have been through
what we have ought to stand by each other even after they've got through
their hardest rubs.

"Now, Mrs. Cliff, has anything happened to you? Have you had any
set-backs? I know that this is a mighty queer world, and that even the
richest people can often come down with a sudden thump just as if they
had slipped on the ice."

Mrs. Cliff smiled. "Nothing has happened to me," she said. "I have had
no set-backs, and I am just as rich to-day,--I should say a great deal
richer, than I was on the day when Captain Horn made the division of the
treasure. But I know very well why you thought something had happened to
me. You did not expect to find me living in this little