and Ida Walker
in attendance upon her. She had removed the handkerchief, and had put on
a little cap with pink ribbons, and a maroon dressing-jacket, daintily
fulled at the neck and sleeves.

"My dear friend," said she as he entered, "I wish to make a last few
remarks to you. No, no," she continued, laughing, as she saw a look of
dismay upon his face. "I shall not dream of dying for at least another
thirty years. A woman should be ashamed to die before she is seventy.
I wish, Clara, that you would ask your father to step up. And you, Ida,
just pass me my cigarettes, and open me a bottle of stout."

"Now then," she continued, as the doctor joined their party. "I don't
quite know what I ought to say to you, Admiral. You want some very plain
speaking to."

"'Pon my word, ma'am, I don't know what you are talking about."

"The idea of you at your age talking of going to sea, and leaving that
dear, patient little wife of yours at home, who has seen nothing of you
all her life! It's all very well for you. You have the life, and the
change, and the excitement, but you don't think of her eating her heart
out in a dreary London lodging. You men are all the same."

"Well, ma'am, since you know so much, you probably know also that I have
sold my pension. How am I to live if I do not turn my hand to work?"

Mrs. Westmacott produced a large registered envelope from beneath the
sheets and tossed it over to the old seaman.

"That excuse won't do. There are your pension papers. Just see if they
are right."

He broke the seal, and out tumbled the very papers which he had made
over to McAdam two days before.

"But what am I to do with these now?" he cried in bewilderment.

"You will put them in a safe place, or get a friend to do so, and, if
you do your duty, you will go to your wife and beg her pardon for having
even for an instant thought of leaving her."

The Admiral passed his hand over his rugged forehead. "This is very good
of you, ma'am," said he, "very good and kind, and I know that you are a
staunch friend, but for all that these papers mean money, and though we
may have been in broken water lately, we are not quite in such straits
as to have to signal to our friends. When we do, ma'am, there's no one
we would look to sooner than to you."

"Don't be ridiculous!" said the widow. "You know nothing whatever about
it, and yet you stand there laying down the law. I'll have my way in
the matter, and you shall take the pa