quent anxiety have brought him very near to the grave. But I
will break it to him judiciously. We will get my dear little Hester to
do it."

"_Your_ Hester!" exclaimed Mrs Foster, in surprise. "I trust, George,
that you, a mere midshipman, have not dared to speak to that child of--"

"Make your mind easy, mother," replied the middy, with a laugh, "I have
not said a word. Haven't required to. We have both spoken to each
other with our eyes, and that is quite enough at present. I feel as
sure of my little Hester as if we were fairly spliced. There goes the
breakfast-bell. Will you be down soon?"

"No. I am too happy to-day to be able to eat in public, George. Send
it up to me."

The breakfast-room in that seaside villa presented an interesting
company, for the fugitives had stuck together with feelings of powerful
sympathy since they had landed in England. Hugh Sommers was there, but
it was not easy to recognise in the fine, massive, genial gentleman, in
a shooting suit of grey, the ragged, wretched slave who, not long
before, had struggled like a tiger with the janissaries on the walls of
Algiers. And Hester was there, of course, with her sunny hair and sunny
looks and general aspect of human sunniness all over, as unlike to the
veiled and timid Moorish lady, or the little thin-nosed negress, as
chalk is to cheese! Edouard Laronde was also there, and he, like the
others, had undergone wonderful transformation in the matter of
clothing, but he had also changed in body, for a severe illness had
seized him when he landed, and it required all Mrs Foster's careful
nursing to "pull him through," as the middy styled it. Brown the sailor
was also there, for, being a pleasant as well as a sharp man, young
Foster resolved to get him into the Navy, and, if possible, into the
same ship with himself. Meanwhile he retained him to assist in the
search for Marie Laronde and her daughter. Last, but by no means least,
Peter the Great was there--not as one of the breakfast party, but as a
waiter.

Peter had from the first positively refused to sit down to meals in a
dining-party room!

"No, Geo'ge," he said, when our middy proposed it to him, on the
occasion of their arrival at his mother's home--"No, Geo'ge. I _won't_
do it. Das flat! I's not bin used to it. My proper speer is de
kitchen. Besides, do you t'ink I'd forsake my Angelica an' leabe her to
feed alone downstairs, w'ile her husband was a-gorgin' of his