s for
father, who was having a spell-off in the backyard with his pipe, he
beamed all over at the sight of me in my uniform.

"Lor', Tom!" he ejaculated, on my taking him unawares, with his head
leaning back and the long churchwarden he was smoking dropping out of
his mouth, for he had just started, with his eyes closed, for a `lay off
the land,' as he styled taking a snooze. "Ye're the very h'image of
what I wer' when I wer' your age--though not quite so good-looking I'm
a-thinking!"

He said this in joke, for he and I were in the habit when in the wherry
together of carrying on in that way and chaffing each other; but mother,
who had followed me up, with Jenny behind her and Mick Donovan keeping
close company in her wake, took poor father up with a round turn!

"What do you know what you were like at his age?" she cried. "Judging
by your present figurehead, you couldn't have been much to boast of!"

"Couldn't I?" rejoined father. "I tell you what, Sarah, there wer' a
lot more gals 'sides you as wos a-runnin' arter me when I was a
youngster and first jined the sarvice!" Hearing my mother's name
mentioned, old `Ally Sloper' at once struck up a screech, hopping
through from the shop to join us.

"Say-rah, Say-rah!" he screamed, ruffling up the lemon crest on the top
of his head, and spreading out the feathers round his neck that made him
look as if he wore high collars. "I'll wring your neck!"

I thought Mick Donovan would have died of laughing on hearing the
cockatoo speak so funnily, his mirth being so contagious that we all
followed suit; and, what with the screeching and screaming of the other
birds, which seemed to take `Ally Sloper's' cry for a signal and chimed
in, you never heard such a row in your life.

"Bedad, Oi'm kilt entoirely!" exclaimed Mick, when he had well-nigh
laughed himself black in the face. "Oi nivver heerd such a baste in me
loife fur talkin', to bay sure!"

That made us all begin the concert over again; and I really think we
kept on laughing and then stopping, only to break out again, until
mother spread the table for tea, just to "shut our mouths," as she said.

Both she and father were really pleased to see Mick, whom they had
welcomed as my chum in the first instance, but presently began to like
for his own sake after his being but a very short time in their
presence--he was such a jolly chap all round!

My sister, however, seemed a bit shy with him, as indeed Mick appeared