boyhood,--is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the
everyday life of cares and duties; it is to enter into the confidences
of home. Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands and
wept!

My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack
now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. I verily believe he
read all that was passing in mine as easily as if it had been Greek. He
stole his arm gently round my waist and whispered, "Hush!" Then,
lifting his voice, he cried aloud, "Brother Roland, you must not let
Jack have the best of the argument."

"Brother Austin," replied the Captain, very formally, "Mr. Jack, if I
may take the liberty so to call him--"

"You may indeed," cried Uncle Jack.

"Sir," said the Captain, bowing, "it is a familiarity that does me
honor. I was about to say that Mr. Jack has retired from the field."

"Far from it," said Squills, dropping an effervescing powder into a
chemical mixture which he had been preparing with great attention,
composed of sherry and lemon-juice--"far from it. Mr. Tibbets--whose
organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the by--was saying--"

"That it is a rank sin and shame in the nineteenth century," quoth Uncle
Jack, "that a man like my friend Captain Caxton--"

"De Caxton, sir--Mr. Jack."