d myself will put you into training
while the voyage lasts, I hope you 'll do us credit in the end."

"Much will depend on my mistress, sir," said I, determining to profit
by what I had overheard, but yet not use the knowledge rashly or
unadvisedly. "Should she not be very exacting and very particular,
but have a little patience with me, accepting zeal for skill, I 've no
doubt, sir, I 'll not discredit your recommendation."

"That's the very point I'm coming to, Con," said the captain, lowering
his voice to a most confidential tone.

"The true state of the case is this: "--and here he entered upon an
explanation which I need not trouble the reader by recapitulating, since
it merely went the length I have already related, save that he added, in
conclusion, this important piece of information:--

"Your golden rule, in every difficulty, will then be, to assure Mrs.
Davis that you always did so, whatever it may be, when you were living
with Lord George, or Sir Charles, or the Bishop of Drone. You understand
me, eh?"

"I think so, sir," said I, brightening up, and at the same time stealing
an illustration from my old legal practices. "In Mrs. Davis's court
there are no precedents."

"Exactly, Con; hit the nail on the very head, my boy!"

"It will not be a very difficult game, sir, if the guests are like the
mistress."

"So they are, for the most part; now and then you'll have a military and
naval officer at table, and you'll be obliged to look out sharp, and
not let them detect you; but with the skippers of merchantmen, dockyard
people, storekeepers, male and female, I fancy you can hold your own."

"Why, sir, I hope they'll be satisfied with the qualification that
contented my former titled masters," said I, with a knowing twinkle of
the eye he seemed to relish prodigiously, and an assumed tone of voice
that suited well the part I was to play.

"Come down below, now, and we 'll write your characters for you;" and so
he beckoned the others to accompany him to the cabin, whither I followed
them.

An animated debate ensued as to the number and nature of the
certificates I ought to possess, some being of opinion that I should
have those of every kind and degree; others alleging that my age forbade
the likelihood of my having served in more than two or three situations.

"What say you to this, lads?" said Pike, reading from a rough and
much-corrected draft before him:--

The bearer, Cornelius Cregan, has li