to consider the proposal. Thereafter she had a long talk with her
husband, and the result was that on the following day our hero found
himself in a train with a small new portmanteau by his side, a new
billy-cock hat on his head, a very small new purse in his pocket, with a
remarkably small sum of money therein, and a light yet full heart in his
breast. He was on his way to the Nore, where the Great Eastern lay,
like an antediluvian macaroni-eater, gorging itself with innumerable
miles of Atlantic Cable.

To say truth, Robin's breast--capacious though it was for his size--
could hardly contain his heart that day. The dream of his childhood was
about to be realised! He had thirsted for knowledge. He had acquired
all that was possible in his father's limited circumstances. He had,
moreover, with the valuable assistance of Sam Shipton, become deeply
learned in electrical science. He had longed with all his heart to
become an electrician--quite ready, if need were, to commence as sweeper
of a telegraph-office, but he had come to regard his desires as too
ambitious, and, accepting his lot in life with the quiet contentment
taught him by his mother, had entered on a clerkship in a mercantile
house, and had perched himself, with a little sigh no doubt, yet
cheerfully, on the top of a three-legged stool. To this stool he had
been so long attached--physically--that he had begun to regard it almost
as part and parcel of himself, and had made up his mind that he would
have to stick to it through life. He even sometimes took a quaint view
of the matter, and tried to imagine that through long habit it would
stick to him at last, and oblige him to carry it about sticking straight
out behind him; perhaps even require him to take it to bed with him, in
which case he sometimes tried to imagine what would be the precise
effect on the bedclothes if he were to turn from one side to the other.
Thus had his life been projected in grey perspective to his mental eye.

But now--he actually was an electrician-elect on his way to join the
biggest ship in the world, to aid in laying the greatest telegraph cable
in the world, in company with some of the greatest men in the universe!
It was almost too much for him. He thirsted for sympathy. He wanted to
let off his feelings in a cheer, but life in a lunatic asylum presented
itself, and he refrained. There was a rough-looking sailor lad about
his own age, but much bigger, on the seat opp