and was certainly a very different beverage from what we had been in the
habit of drinking; and, altogether, the meal was a perfect Epicurean
feast compared with what we were accustomed to.

Ella presided, doing the honours of the small table with the grace of a
princess, and I began to feel as though I had suddenly become an
inhabitant of fairy-land.

As soon as my meal was over I relieved Bob, and he went below for his
share of the good things; and though Miss Ella had been very demure with
me, I soon discovered, by the peals of musical laughter which, mingled
with Bob's gruffer cachinnations, floated up through the companion, that
the two had completely broken the ice between them.

As soon as the remains of the meal had been cleared away, and the wants
of her pet kitten attended to, the little lady came on deck and
commenced an animated conversation with Bob and me, as we smoked the
pipe of peace (Ella declaring that she quite liked the odour of
tobacco), asking a thousand questions, and full of wonder that such a
"dear little tiny yacht" had come all the way from England.

She was most anxious to try her hand at steering, which she thought she
could do quite well; and I promised I would instruct her at a more
favourable opportunity, explaining that we were just then so
circumstanced that none but _experienced_ helmsmen could be trusted with
the tiller, it being more difficult to steer properly when running
before the wind than at any other time.

"But it _looks_ quite easy," she persisted, "to hold that handle. _You_
do not move it much, and surely I could do the little you are doing. I
used to steer the _Copernicus_ sometimes, but she never _would_ go
straight with _me_; and it was _so_ tiring to keep turning that great
wheel round."

Bob laughed joyously at this quaint speech, and proceeded laboriously to
hold forth on the science of the helmsman, interlarding his lecture
copiously with nautical illustrations and sea phrases, which were so
much Greek to his pupil, who listened with an open-eyed earnestness
which was most entertaining.

She heard Bob with the utmost patience and attention until he had
utterly exhausted his entire stock of precepts, when she thanked him as
courteously and sweetly as though she had understood every word of it;
and then electrified us both, and set me off into a fit of perfectly
uncontrollable laughter, by asking him, in the same breath, to sing her
a song.

Whatever Bob