our to this question,
ringing the bell as she spoke. "He'll soon be ready if you insist on
taking him away with you."

"Humph!" ejaculated the other, "as he's going to be my valet or factotum
by the agreement we made to-day, I don't think we'll be able to tell
whether we suit each other, ha-ha! if he remains in one house and I in
another, eh?"

"Perhaps not," said Mrs Gilmour, smiling in response with the chuckle
he indulged in at the recollection of his old joke on his way home from
the dockyard; and Dick entering the room at the same moment, with a
broad grin on his face as if he knew what they were talking about, she
added--"Sure, here he is to spake for himself! Are you ready to go home
with the Captain, Dick?"

"Yes, mum," answered the lad promptly. "Sarah told me as how the good
gentleman allers went away sharp at nine o'clock, and so I comes up as
the bell rung."

"That's right, sharp's the word and quick's the motion; so we'd better
be off," said the old sailor, taking his hat and stick which the
housemaid, Sarah aforesaid, brought in from the hall. "Good-night,
ma'am,--good-night, chickabiddies!"

"Good-night!" replied Mrs Gilmour, Nellie echoing her aunt's adieu with
a parting injunction of her own. "Pray be sure and bring back Dick to-
morrow morning, Captain!"

"Perhaps, too, you'll tell us then what you are going to do if we are
good?" said Bob entreatingly, "though you would not to-night."

"We'll see how the cat jumps!" replied the Captain with his cheery
chuckling laugh as he marched out of the hall and down the steps with
Dick after him; their retreating footsteps gradually dying away until
they rounded the corner of the parade, the last sound heard being that
of the ferrule of the Captain's malacca cane as it rang on the pavement,
keeping time to the rhythm of his tread, and his voice repeating in the
distance his quizzing rejoinder, "we'll see how the cat jumps!"

The `cat' evidently did not `jump' properly the next day, or, if it
jumped at all, it executed that movement most decidedly in the wrong
direction; for, when morning broke, much to Bob and Miss Nell's disgust,
they found that a stormy south-easterly gale had set in, accompanied by
smart showers of rain, which very unpleasant change in the aspect of the
weather put all ideas of their going out entirely out of the question.

During the night, the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly,
rose considerably, drowning the cla