s the young woman
said to the young man she didn't want to marry."

The matter being thus satisfactorily settled, Bob Lumsden and his little
friend went off to Yarmouth, intent on carrying out the first part of
their plan.

It chanced about the same time that another couple were having a quiet
chat together in the neighbourhood of Gorleston Pier. Fred Martin and
Isa Wentworth had met by appointment to talk over a subject of peculiar
interest to themselves. Let us approach and become eavesdroppers.

"Now, Fred," said Isa, with a good deal of decision in her tone, "I'm
not at all satisfied with your explanation. These mysterious and long
visits you make to London ought to be accounted for, and as I have
agreed to become your wife within the next three or four months, just to
please _you_, the least you can do, I think, is to have no secrets from
_me_. Besides, you have no idea what the people here and your former
shipmates are saying about you."

"Indeed, dear lass, what do they say?"

"Well, they say now you've got well they can't understand why you should
go loafing about doin' nothin' or idling your time in London, instead of
goin' to sea."

"Idlin' my time!" exclaimed Fred with affected indignation. "How do
they know I'm idlin' my time? What if I was studyin' to be a doctor or
a parson?"

"Perhaps they'd say that _was_ idlin' your time, seein' that you're only
a fisherman," returned Isa, looking up in her lover's face with a bright
smile. "But tell me, Fred, why should you have any secret from _me_?"

"Because, dear lass, the thing that gives me so much pleasure and hope
is not absolutely fixed, and I don't want you to be made anxious. This
much I will tell you, however: you know I passed my examination for
skipper when I was home last time, and now, through God's goodness, I
have been offered the command of a smack. If all goes well, I hope to
sail in her next week; then, on my return, I hope to--to take the
happiest. Well, well, I'll say no more about that, as we're gettin'
near mother's door. But tell me, Isa, has Uncle Martin been worrying
mother again when I was away?"

"No. When he found out that you had got the money that was left to her,
and had bought an annuity for her with it, he went away, and I've not
seen him since."

"That's well. I'm glad of that."

"But am I to hear nothing more about this smack, not even her name?"

"Nothing more just now, Isa. As to her name, it's not ye