uite easily, as far as the house."

But Little Bill was not destined to be left to solitary meditations that
day, for his brother had not left him more than a few minutes when a
footstep was heard on the path outside, and next moment Fred Jenkins
presented himself at the opening of the summer-house. The face of the
mariner betrayed him, for he was too honest by nature to dissemble
effectively.

"Well, Fred, how are you? You seem a little disappointed, I think."

"Not exactly disappointed, Little Bill, but sort o' ways scumbusticated,
so to speak--perplexed, if I may say so. Kind o' ways puzzled, d'ee
see?"

There was something very amusing in the manner of the strapping seaman
as he sat down beside the puny little boy, with a bashful expression on
his handsome face, as if he were about to make a humiliating confession.

"What troubles you, Jenkins?" asked Billie, with the air of a man who is
ready to give any amount of advice, or, if need be, consolation.

The seaman twisted his eyebrows into a complex form, and seemed
uncertain how to proceed. Suddenly he made up his mind.

"Was you ever in love, Little Bill?" he asked abruptly, and with a smile
that seemed to indicate a feeling that the question was absurd.

"O yes," answered the boy quite coolly. "I've been in love with brother
Archie ever since I can remember."

Jenkins looked at his little friend with a still more complicated knot
of puzzlement in his eyebrows, for he felt that Billie was scarcely
fitted by years or experience to be a useful confidant. After resting
his hands on his knees, and his eyes on the ground, for some time, he
again made up his mind and turned to Billie, who sat with his large eyes
fixed earnestly on the countenance of his tall friend, wondering what
perplexed him so much, and waiting for further communications.

"Little Bill," said Jenkins, laying a large hand on his small knee, "in
course you can't be expected to understand what I wants to talk about,
but there's nobody else I'd like to speak to, and you're such a knowin'
little shaver that somehow I felt a kind of--of notion that I'd like to
ask your advice--d'ee see?"

"I see--all right," returned Billie; "though I wonder at such a man as
you wanting advice from the like of me. But I'll do what I can for you,
Jenkins, and perhaps I know more about the thing that troubles you than
you think."

"I'm afraid not," returned the seaman, with a humorous twinkle in his
eye.