e boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and
at sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch your
name?"

"Hanmer, ma'am."

"Well, and isn't it so?"

"Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer. "If ever your ladyship
had been in the Navy--"

"God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected.

"--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour,
ma'am."

"H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing.
"The child will not lack protection, of course. Whether 'tis to their
credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience
for--er--obligations of this kind."

On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them,
Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing
the child off to sea.

"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it
appears, has no objection."

"She is not returning to Carolina by sea."

"No; but she can influence her husband. I must have another talk with
her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife,
more than presentable. One had hardly indeed looked to find such
natural good manners in this part of the world. Her mother was a
Quakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I had
imagined to be against their principles. She doesn't say 'thee' and
'thou' either."

"I heard her _tutoyer_ her husband."

"Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently,
"Harry is a lucky man. When one thinks of the dreadful connections
these sailors are only too apt to form--though one cannot wholly blame
them, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I was
saying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child.
At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and
since he has this craze for salt water--curious he should resemble his
uncle in this rather than his father--one may almost call it
providential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have
shown a little more interest."

"In the child? Why?"

"Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt
questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family,
remember. He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself
out not a little--"

"I can believe _that_," said Diana brusquely.

"And it says much. All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was very
far from