imagine what `stivers' mean. Can
you, Jane?"

"Haven't the remotest idea; perhaps Johnson, or Walker, or Webster may--
yes, Webster is sure to."

"Oh! never mind just now, dear Jane, we can look it up
afterwards--`stivers--sticks and stivers'--something very dreadful, I
fear. `But we're all safe and well now'--I'm _so_ thankful!--`and we've
been stumped'--No `starved nearly to death, too. My poor Ailie was
thinner than ever I saw her before'--This is horrible, dear Jane."

"Dreadful, darling Martha."

"`But she's milk and butter'--It can't be that--`milk and'--oh!--`much
better now.'"

At this point Martha laid down the letter, and the two sisters wept for
a few seconds in silence.

"Darling Ailie!" said Martha, drying her eyes, "how thin she must have
been!"

"Ah! yes, and no one to take in her frocks."

"`We'll be home in less than no time,'" continued Martha, reading, "`so
you may get ready for us. Glynn will have tremendous long yarns to spin
to you when we come back, and so will Ailie. She has seen a Lotofun
since we left you'--Bless me! what _can_ that be, Jane?"

"Very likely some terrible sea monster, Martha; how thankful we ought to
be that it did not eat her!--`seen a Lotofun'--strange!--`a Lot--o''--
Oh!--`_lot o' fun_!'--that's it! how stupid of me!--`and my dear pet has
been such an ass'--Eh! for shame, brother."

"Don't you think, dear, Martha, that there's some more of that word on
the next line?"

"So there is, I'm _so_ stupid--`istance'--It's not rightly divided
though--`as-sistance and a comfort to me.' I knew it couldn't be ass."

"So did I. Ailie an ass! precious child!"

"`Now, good-bye t'ye, my dear lassies,'

"`Ever your affectionate brother,'

"(Dear Fellow!)

"`GEORGE DUNNING.'"

Now it chanced that the ship which conveyed the above letter across the
Atlantic was a slow sailer and was much delayed by contrary winds. And
it also chanced--for odd coincidences do happen occasionally in human
affairs--that the vessel in which Captain Dunning with Ailie and his
crew embarked some weeks later was a fast-sailing ship, and was blown
across the sea with strong favouring gales. Hence it fell out that the
first vessel entered port on Sunday night, and the second cast anchor in
the same port on Monday morning.

The green-painted door, therefore, of the yellow-faced cottage, had
scarcely recovered from the assault of the letter-carrier, when it was
again struck violently by