icking his heels disconsolately: another of these
wretched old women coming down to jaw him! He wished every one of them
at the bottom of the sea. However he pulled himself together and went
forward to greet his aunt: he was not in the least bashful. And as they
left the station he took stock of her, out of the tail of his eye. With
a growing approval: this one at any rate he needn't feel ashamed of;
and she was not so dreadfully old after all. Perhaps she mightn't turn
out quite such a wet blanket as the rest; though, from experience, he
couldn't connect any pleasure with relatives' visits: they were nasty
pills that had to be swallowed. He feared and disliked his father; Aunt
Zara had been sheerly ridiculous, with her frills and simpers--the boys
had imitated her for weeks after--and once, most shameful of all, his
stepmother had come down and publicly wept over him. His cheeks still
burnt at the remembrance; and he had been glad to hear that she was
dead: served her jolly well right! But this Aunt Mary seemed a horse of
another colour; and he did not sneak her into town by a back way, as he
had planned to do before seeing her.

Greatly as Mary might admire the tall fair lad by her side, she found
herself at a loss how to deal with him, the mind of a schoolboy of
thirteen being a closed book to her. Johnny looked demure and answered
"Yes, Aunt Mary," to everything she said; but this was of small
assistance in getting at the real boy inside.

Johnny had no intention, in the beginning, of taking her into his
often-betrayed and badly bruised confidence. However a happy instinct
led her to suggest a visit to a shop that sold brandy-snaps and
gingerbeer; and this was too much for his strength of mind. Golly,
didn't he have a tuck-in! And a whole pound of bull's-eyes to take back
with him to school!

It was over the snaps, with an earth-brown moustache drawn round his
fresh young mouth, the underlip of which swelled like a ripe cherry,
that he blurted out: "I say, Aunt Mary, DON'T let the pater stick me in
that beastly old office of his. I ... I want to go to sea."

"Oh, but Johnny! Your father would never consent to that, I'm sure."

"I don't see why not," returned the boy in an aggrieved voice. "I hate
figures and father knows it. I tell you I mean to go to sea." And as he
said it his lip shot out, and suddenly, for all his limpid blue eyes
and flaxen hair, it was his father's face that confronted Mary.

"He wouldn'