mother?" I said smiling.

"Yes, my son, and of the best and strongest stuff. I'm glad to say that
I've just finished a couple of pairs of strongly-knitted stockings."

And from that hour, I believe, my mother was happy in her task of
getting ready my sea-chest, putting in no end of pleasant little
surprises for me, to be ready when I was in the far-off land.

Tom, too, was not forgotten, poor fellow, for he had no one to take
tender notice of him.

"And it don't matter a bit, Mas'r Harry," he cried cheerily, "I don't
want a lot o' things. One clean shirt and a pocket-comb--that's about
all a chap like me wants."

But he was better provided than that, and at last, before a couple of
months had passed away, our farewells were said and we started for
Liverpool, in low spirits with our partings, but full of hope and eager
ambition, since at the great western port we were to take our passage in
one of the great steamers for the West Indies, where we would have to
change into a smaller trading vessel which would take us on to Caracas.

"No soap-boiling out there, Mas'r Harry," cried Tom cheerily; and he
gave a long sniff as if to get some of the familiar old smell into his
nose.

"No, Tom," I replied quietly. "We are going to begin a new life now;"
for the future looked to me a far more serious affair than I had
imagined before in the midst of my sanguine aspirations and rather wild
and dreamy ideas.

CHAPTER FOUR.

TOM CATCHES THE COMPLAINT.

"Oh, my eye, Mas'r Harry! Dear heart, dear heart, how bad I do feel!"

"Why, you kept laughing at me, you wretch," I said, as I rejoiced at
Tom's downfall.

"_Surely_, so I did, Mas'r Harry--I did, I did--but I didn't think it
was half so--so bad as this here. Oh, my eye! how badly I do feel!"

"You old humbug, you!" I cried in my triumph, for I was getting over my
troubles, "sneered and jeered and pooh-poohed it all, you did, Tom, and
now it has you by the hip at last."

"No, it hasn't, Mas'r Harry," he groaned. "It aren't the hip, it's more
in the middle. Oh, my eye! how ill I am!"

"I'm precious glad of it, Tom," I said.

"Well, I do call that cowardly, Mas'r Harry--I do really," groaned
Tom--"'specially as you wasn't half so bad as I am."

"Why, I was ten times worse, Tom," I cried.

"Oh, Mas'r Harry! don't say that," groaned the poor fellow, "because
it's unpossible. If--Oh, my eye! how ill I do feel!--if you'd been ten
times as bad as I am, yo