rasping voice, "I'd box your
ears for you. That's what I'd do to you, and you can go and tell the
cap'n I said so. Spy!"

This was the first verse of the first watch, and there were many verses.
To add to his discomfort he was confined to the house, as his charge
manifested no desire to go outside, and as neither she nor her aunt
cared about the trouble of bringing him to a fit and proper state of
subjection, the task became a labour of love for the energetic Susan.
In spite of everything, however, he stuck to his guns, and the indignant
Chrissie, who was in almost hourly communication with Metcalfe through
the medium of her faithful handmaiden, was rapidly becoming desperate.

On the fourth day, time getting short, Chrissie went on a new tack with
her keeper, and Susan, sorely against her will, had to follow suit.
Chrissie smiled at him, Susan called him Mr. Tucker, and Miss Polson
gave him a glass of her best wine. From the position of an outcast, he
jumped in one bound to that of confidential adviser. Miss Polson
told him many items of family interest, and later on in the afternoon
actually consulted him as to a bad cold which Chrissie had developed.

He prescribed half-a-pint of linseed oil hot, but Miss Polson favoured
chlorodyne. The conversation then turned on the deadly qualities of that
drug when taken in excess, of the fatal sleep in which it lulled its
victims. So disastrous were the incidents cited, that half an hour
later, when, her aunt and Susan being out, Chrissie took a small bottle
of chlorodyne from the mantel-piece, the boatswain implored her to try
his nastier but safer remedy instead.

"Nonsense!" said Chrissie, "I'm only going to take twenty
drops--one--two--three--"

The drug suddenly poured out in a little stream.

"I should think that's about it," said Chrissie, holding the tumbler up
to the light.

"It's about five hundred!" said the horrified Tucker. "Don't take that,
miss, whatever you do; let me measure it for you."

The girl waved him away, and, before he could interfere, drank off the
contents of the glass and resumed her seat. The boatswain watched her
uneasily, and taking up the phial carefully read through the directions.
After that he was not at all surprised to see the book fall from his
charge's hand on to the floor, and her eyes close.

"I knowed it," said Tucker, in a profuse perspiration, "I knowed it.
Them blamed gals are all alike. Always knows what's best. Miss Pols