him to
see that Mrs Gilmour was only joking, and that he had but played into
her hands, as he said to himself, by losing his temper over it.

"I tell you what," he now exclaimed, without a single trace of ill-
humour. "You shall see that I'm not ashamed of my little craft, for
I'll have the _Zephyr_ brought over from Gosport to-morrow. What is
more, too, the whole lot of you shall go out for a sail in her--by
Jove!"

The Captain was as good as his word, the yacht being towed across the
following afternoon from Haslar Creek, where she had been lying, ever
since the last yachting season, on the mud flats that there exist.

The little craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of
bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and
show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage
mentioned by the Captain.

But, in spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making
of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea
watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft
being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now under the
charge of Hellyer, when the Captain was not immediately looking after
her himself.

Mrs Gilmour, however, remained obdurate; for, though satisfied now that
the "yacht" really was an actual fact instead of merely a creation of
her old friend's fancy, being somewhat averse to adventuring her life on
the deep save in large vessels, and even of these she confessed feeling
rather shy since the wreck of the _Bembridge Belle_, she, very
aggravatingly, declined going out in the cutter--a want of taste on her
part shared by her sister-in-law, whose weak nerves supplied a more
reasonable pretext for not accepting the Captain's usual invitation to
make the little vessel's better acquaintance.

Bob's father, however, exhibited no such reluctance; and, as for Bob
himself, he and Nellie and Dick were all in the seventh heaven of
delight when, a morning or two afterwards, there being a nice nor'-
westerly breeze blowing, which was good both for working out to sea and
running home again, the Captain took them for a sail, managing single-
handed the smart cutter as only a sailor, such as he was, could.

Thenceforward, Bob's holidays were all halcyon days.

He had certainly enjoyed himself before; in his rambles on the beach, in
his daily dip and new experiences of the delights of swimming; in the