dress before tea, and I am
sure you prefer my sitting down to the table tidy and neat with a
fresh collar and cuffs, to my taking my place in my working dress with
odds and ends of threads and litter clinging to it."

"Of course I do, mother, and I see what you mean now. Certainly I will
change my things in future. You don't mind, do you, Bill?"

Bill would not have minded in the least any amount of trouble by which
he could give the slightest satisfaction to Mrs. Andrews, who had now
a place in his affections closely approximating to that which George
occupied.

During the summer months the programme for the evening was not carried
out as arranged, for at the end of April Mrs. Andrews herself declared
that there must be a change.

"The evenings are getting light enough now for a walk after tea, boys,
and you must therefore cut short our reading and studies till the days
close in again in the autumn. It would do you good to get out in the
air a bit."

"But will you come with us, mother?"

"No, George. Sometimes as evenings get longer we may make little
excursions together: go across the river to Greenwich and spend two or
three hours in the park, or take a steamer and go up the river to Kew;
but as a general thing you had better take your rambles together. I
have my front garden to look after, the vegetables are your work, you
know, and if I like I can go out and do whatever shopping I have to do
while you two are away."

So the boys took to going out walks, which got longer and longer as
the evenings drew out, and when they were not disposed for a long
ramble they would go down to a disused wharf and sit there and watch
the barges drifting down the river or tacking backwards and forwards,
if there was a wind, with their great brown and yellow sails hauled
tautly in, and the great steamers dropping quietly down the river, and
the little busy tugs dragging great ships after them. There was an
endless source of amusement in wondering from what ports the various
craft had come or what was their destination.

"What seems most wonderful to me, George," Bill said one day, "when
one looks at them big steamers----"

"Those," George corrected.

"Thank ye--at those big steamers, is to think that they can be tossed
about, and the sea go over them, as one reads about, just the same
way as the wave they make when they goes down----"

"Go down, Bill."

"Thank ye--go down the river, tosses the little boats about; it d