your place, and we shall be turned out into
the street to starve."

"Will you be quiet, Sally? How's a man to eat his tea with you going on
like that?"

"Turned out into the world without a chance of getting another place.
Oh! It's too bad. Why did I ever marry such a man as you?"

"'Cause you were glad of the chance," grumbled Jem, raising his hand to
pour out some tea, but it was pushed aside indignantly, and the little
woman busily, but with a great show of indignation, filled and sweetened
her husband's cup, which she dabbed down before him, talking all the
while, and finishing with,--

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jem."

"I am," he grumbled. "Ashamed that I was ever such a stupid as to marry
a girl who's always dissatisfied. Nice home you make me."

"And a nice home you make me, sir; and don't eat your victuals so fast.
It's like being at the wild beast show."

"That's right; go on," grumbled Jem, doubling his rate of consumption.
"Grudge me my meals now. Good job if we could undo it all, and be as we
was."

"I wish we could," cried the little woman, whose eyes seemed to say that
her lips were not telling the truth.

"So do I," cried Jem, tossing off his third cup of tea; and then to his
little wife's astonishment he took a thick slice of bread and butter in
each hand, clapped them together as if they were cymbals, rose from the
table and put on his hat.

"Where are you going, Jem?"

"Out."

"What for?"

"To eat my bread and butter down on the quay."

"But why, Jem?"

"'Cause there's peace and quietness there."

_Bang_! Went the door, and little Mrs Wimble stood gazing at it
angrily for a few moments before sitting down and having what she called
"a good cry," after which she rose, wiped her eyes, and put away the tea
things without partaking of any herself.

"Poor Jem!" she said softly; "I'm afraid I'm very unkind to him
sometimes."

Just at that moment Jem was sitting on an empty cask, eating his bread
and butter, and watching a boat manned by blue-jackets going off to the
sloop of war lying out toward the channel, and flying her colours in the
evening breeze.

"Poor little Sally!" he said to himself. "We don't seem to get on
somehow, and I'm afraid I'm a bit rough to her; but knives and scissors!
What a temper she have got."

Meanwhile, in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, Don had gone home
to find that the tea was ready, and that he was being treated as a
lagga