egal firm in the
City, advising her that her uncle was dead--her old curmudgeon of an
uncle--a retired stockbroker, a heartless, petrified antiquity that had
lasted on and on. He was nearly ninety, I believe; and if I were to meet
his venerable ghost this minute, I would try to take him by the throat
and strangle him.

The old beast would never forgive his niece for marrying Bunter; and
years afterwards, when people made a point of letting him know that she
was in London, pretty nearly starving at forty years of age, he only
said: "Serve the little fool right!" I believe he meant her to starve.
And, lo and behold, the old cannibal died intestate, with no other
relatives but that very identical little fool. The Bunters were wealthy
people now.

Of course, Mrs. Bunter wept as if her heart would break. In any other
woman it would have been mere hypocrisy. Naturally, too, she wanted to
cable the news to her Winston in Calcutta, but I showed her, _Gazette_
in hand, that the ship was on the homeward-bound list for more than a
week already. So we sat down to wait, and talked meantime of dear old
Winston every day. There were just one hundred such days before the
_Sapphire_ got reported "All well" in the chops of the Channel by an
incoming mailboat.

"I am going to Dunkirk to meet him," says she. The _Sapphire_ had a
cargo of jute for Dunkirk. Of course, I had to escort the dear lady
in the quality of her "ingenious friend." She calls me "our ingenious
friend" to this day; and I've observed some people--strangers--looking
hard at me, for the signs of the ingenuity, I suppose.

After settling Mrs. Bunter in a good hotel in Dunkirk, I walked down to
the docks--late afternoon it was--and what was my surprise to see the
ship actually fast alongside. Either Johns or Bunter, or both, must have
been driving her hard up Channel. Anyway, she had been in since the
day before last, and her crew was already paid off. I met two of
her apprenticed boys going off home on leave with their dunnage on a
Frenchman's barrow, as happy as larks, and I asked them if the mate was
on board.

"There he is, on the quay, looking at the moorings," says one of the
youngsters as he skipped past me.

You may imagine the shock to my feelings when I beheld his white head. I
could only manage to tell him that his wife was at an hotel in town.
He left me at once, to go and get his hat on board. I was mightily
surprised by the smartness of his movements as