f progress scarcely inferior.
Within a week or two a house was hired in Nelson Row, a brass-plate
bearing the words "Trojan Club" affixed to the door, and Admiral
Buzza installed in the Presidential Chair. The Presidential Chair
occupied the right-hand side of the reading-room window, which
overlooked the harbour; and the Presidential duties consisted mainly
in conning the morning papers and discussing their contents with Mr.
Goodwyn-Sandys, who usually sat, with a glass of whiskey and the Club
telescope, on the left-hand side of the window. Indeed, it would be
hard to say to which of the two, the whiskey or the telescope, the
Honourable Frederic more sedulously devoted himself: it is certain,
at least, that under the Admiral's instruction he soon developed a
most amazing familiarity with nautical terms, was a mine of
information (almost as soon as the Club invested in a Yacht Register)
on the subject of Lord Sinkport's yacht, the auxiliary screw _Niobe_,
and swept the horizon with a persistence that made his fellow-members
stare.

But the most noticeable feature in this nautical craze was the
disproportionate attention which the Honourable Frederic lavished on
barques. It was the first rig that he learnt to distinguish, and his
early interest developed before long into something like a passion.

One morning, for instance, Sam Buzza lounged into the reading-room
and observed--

"I say, have you seen that American barque that came in last night--
the _Maritana?_"

"What name?" asked Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys, looking up suddenly.

"The _Maritana_, or the _Mariana_, or _Mary Ann_, or something of
the--Hullo! what's wrong?"

But the Honourable Frederic had caught up his hat and fled. Half an
hour afterwards, when he returned, his usual calm self, the little
Doctor took occasion to remark, "Upon my word, you might be a
detective, you keep such a look-out on the harbour"--a remark which
caused Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys to laugh so consumedly that the Doctor,
without exactly seeing the point, began to think he had perpetrated
quite a considerable joke.

But let no one imagine that the disruption of Trojan morals avoided
heart-burning or escaped criticism. For the line which Mr.
Goodwyn-Sandys declared must be drawn somewhere was found not only to
bisect the domestic hearth, but to lead to a surprising number of
social problems. It fell across the parallels of our small society,
and demonstrated that Mrs. A and Mrs. B could