Vow.' Of course that accounts for it. Why, I declare there is the dinner
bell! Come along, Miss Smithers, or we shall lose the place the captain
has promised us." And, accordingly, they went, leaving Mr. Meeson, who
had not yet realized the unprecedented nature of the position, positively
gasping on the deck. And on board the Kangaroo there were no clerks and
editors on whom he could wreck his wrath!

"And now, my dear Miss Smithers," said Lady Holmhurst when, dinner
being over, they were sitting together in the moonlight, near the
wheel, "perhaps you will tell me why you don't like Mr. Meeson,
whom, by-the-way, I personally detest. But don't, if you don't wish
to, you know."

But Augusta did wish to, and then and there she unfolded her whole sad
story into her new-found friend's sympathetic ear; and glad enough the
poor girl was to find a confidant to whom she could unbosom her sorrows.

"Well, upon my word!" said Lady Holmhurst, when she had listened with
tears in her eyes to the history of poor little Jeannie's death, "upon my
word, of all the brutes I ever heard of, I think that this publisher of
yours is the worst! I will cut him, and get my husband to cut him too.
But no, I have a better plan than that. He shall tear up that agreement,
so sure as my name is Bessie Holmhurst; he shall tear it up, or--or"--and
she nodded her little head with an air of infinite wisdom.




CHAPTER VI.