) was not overtaking us--yet Falmouth, when
we reached it, was best of all; Falmouth, with its narrow streets and
crowd of sailors, postmen, 'longshoremen, porters with wheelbarrows,
and passengers hurrying to and from the packets, its smells of pitch
and oakum and canvas, its shops full of seamen's outfits and
instruments and marine curiosities, its upper windows where parrots
screamed in cages, its alleys and quay-doors giving peeps of the
splendid harbour, thronged--to quote Miss Plinlimmon again--"with
varieties of gallant craft, between which the trained nautical eye
may perchance distinguish, but mine doesn't."

The residential part of Falmouth rises in neat terraces above the
waterside, and of these Delamere Terrace was by no means the least
respectable. The brass doorplate of No. 7--"Copenhagen Academy for
the Sons of Gentlemen. Principal, the Rev. Philip Stimcoe, B.A.
(Oxon.)"--shone immaculate; and its window-blinds did Mrs. Stimcoe
credit, as Miss Plinlimmon remarked before ringing the bell.

Mrs. Stimcoe herself opened the door to us, in a full lace cap and a
maroon-coloured gown of state. She was a gaunt, hard-eyed woman,
tall as a grenadier, remarkable for a long upper lip decorated with
two moles. She excused her condescension on the ground that the
butler was out, taking the pupils for a walk; and conducted us to the
parlour, where Mr. Stimcoe sat in an atmosphere which smelt faintly
of sherry.

Mr. Stimcoe rose and greeted us with a shaky hand. He was a thin,
spectacled man, with a pendulous nose and cheeks disfigured by a
purplish cutaneous disorder (which his wife, later on, attributed to
his having slept between damp sheets while the honoured guest of a
nobleman, whose name I forget). He wore a seedy clerical suit.

While shaking hands he observed that I was taller than he had
expected; and this, absurdly enough, is all I remember of the
interview, except that the room had two empty bookcases, one on
either side of the chimney-breast; that the fading of the wallpaper
above the mantelpiece had left a patch recording where a clock had
lately stood (I conjectured that it must be at Greenwich, undergoing
repairs); that Mrs. Stimcoe produced a decanter of sherry--a wine
which Miss Plinlimmon abominated--and poured her out a glassful, with
the remark that it had been twice round the world; that Miss
Plinlimmon supposed vaguely "the same happened to a lot of things in
a seaport like Falmouth;" an