it wouldn't surprise me if it cost you a suit of finery
all round."

"A price I will cheerfully pay for my life. It is as you say--Dido
certainly wishes to speak to me, and I must give her an invitation to
come nearer."

Dido Clawbonny was the cook of the family, and the mother of Chloe.
Whatever hypercriticism might object to her colour, which was a black out
of which all the gloss had fairly glistened itself over the fire, no one
could deny her being full blown. Her weight was exactly two hundred, and
her countenance a strange medley of the light-heartedness of her race, and
the habitual and necessary severity of a cook. She often protested that
she was weighed down by "responserbility;" the whole of the discredit of
overdone beef, or under-done fish, together with those which attach
themselves to heavy bread, lead-like buckwheat-cakes, and a hundred other
similar cases, belonging exclusively to her office. She had been twice
married, the last connection having been formed only a twelvemonth before.
In obedience to a sign, this important lady now approached.

"Welcome back, Masser Mile," Dido began with a curtsey, meaning "Welcome
back from being half-drowned;" "ebberybody _so_ grad you isn't hurt!"

"Thank you, Dido--thank you with all my heart. If I have gained nothing
else by the ducking, I have gained a knowledge of the manner in which my
servants love me."

"Lor' bless us all! How we help it, Masser Mile? As if a body can
posserbly help how lub come and go! Lub jest like religion, Masser
Mile--some get him, and some don't. But lub for a young masser and a young
missus, sah--_dat_ jest as nat'ral, as lub for ole masser and ole missus.
I t'ink nut'in' of neider."

Luckily, I was too well acquainted with the Clawbonny dialect to need a
vocabulary in order to understand the meaning of Dido. All she wished to
express was the idea that it was so much a matter of course for the
dependants of the family to love its heads, that she did not think the
mere circumstance, in itself, worthy of a second thought.

"Well, Dido," I said, "how does matrimony agree with you, in your old
age? I hear you took a second partner to yourself, while I was last
at sea."

Dido let her eyes fall on the deck, according to the custom of all brides,
let their colour be what it may; manifested a proper degree of confusion,
then curtsied, turned her full moon-face so as to resemble a half-moon,
and answered, with a very suspicious sort o