sic and recitations. Muriel is master of six pieces already,
as perhaps you know; and all the other children are quick studies."

George climbed down--he has no real courage--but he did not do it
gracefully. He said that if we were mean and cowardly and false-hearted
enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed he couldn't help it;
and that if I didn't intend to finish the whole bottle of claret myself,
he would trouble me to spare him a glass. He also added, somewhat
illogically, that it really did not matter, seeing both Ethelbertha and
Mrs. Harris were women of sense who would judge him better than to
believe for a moment that the suggestion emanated from him.

This little point settled, the question was: What sort of a change?

Harris, as usual, was for the sea. He said he knew a yacht, just the
very thing--one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking lot of
lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away from the
romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself. We knew that
yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before. It
smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no
ordinary sea air can hope to head against it. So far as sense of smell
is concerned, one might be spending a week in Limehouse Hole. There is
no place to get out of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half
of that is taken up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to
light it. You have to take your bath on deck, and the towel blows
overboard just as you step out of the tub. Harris and the boy do all the
interesting work--the lugging and the reefing, the letting her go and the
heeling her over, and all that sort of thing,--leaving George and myself
to do the peeling of the potatoes and the washing up.

"Very well, then," said Harris, "let's take a proper yacht, with a
skipper, and do the thing in style."

That also I objected to. I know that skipper; his notion of yachting is
to lie in what he calls the "offing," where he can be well in touch with
his wife and family, to say nothing of his favourite public-house.

Years ago, when I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht myself.
Three things had combined to lead me into this foolishness: I had had a
stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha had expressed a yearning for sea
air; and the very next morning, in taking up casually at the club a copy
of the _Sportsman_, I had come across the fol