most comical expression:

'I can't drink this whole bottle by myself. May I pour you out a
glass?'

Betty could do nothing but burst out laughing, and Angel, in spite of
her dismay, joined in, and as to Captain Maitland, he laughed out more
heartily than any of them, and from that moment there was no more
stiffness between them. The captain, though he seemed quite old to
Godfrey, and indeed to his aunts too, was not thirty, for he had
attained his promotion rapidly for courage and coolness in an encounter
off the French coast. He had the frank cheery manners of a sailor too,
so that it was not difficult to feel at home with him; besides, as
Betty said afterwards, where was the use of pretending they didn't
remember that he had had Penny in his arms, and that he had been on his
knees under the table picking up the sweet biscuits?

He would be at home for about a fortnight, he said; he had not been to
Oakfield for nearly seven years, not since his mother's death; and
Angel thought the bright sunburnt face looked a little wistful, and
felt sorry for him having no one to welcome him. But he smiled again
directly as he said how glad he was to find the place so little
changed; and then he asked if he might see the garden, he remembered
being brought there when he was a very little boy; did the clove pinks
still grow in the border under the yew hedge? So they all went out
together, and the captain had forgotten nothing and greeted Miss Jane
as an old friend; there had been a ship in the squadron off the Spanish
coast, he said, whose figurehead always reminded him of her. And he
remembered the view from the paddock, and missed the big elm that had
been blown down two winters ago, and said what a good thing it was the
storm had spared Sir Godfrey's tree; it would be a misfortune indeed if
anything happened to that, but it seemed all right at present, as stout
a heart of oak as the Admiral's flag-ship. And he heard that Cousin
Crayshaw was coming down for Christmas, and said he remembered him and
should do himself the honour of calling upon him. And then they all
walked with him to the end of the lane.

'Do you know,' Betty said as they turned, back, 'I keep on forgetting
that he is Kiah's captain, and yet I like to think he is.'

Angel and Godfrey felt much the same. It did seem so impossible that
this cheery, simple man, who had laughed over the gooseberry wine, and
been so interested in the garden, could be the h