worse than I did yesterday, but we've only ourselves to thank, and the
children happily--"

"Move! Move! Move!" cried Helen, chasing him from corner to corner with
a chair as though he were an errant hen. "Out of the way, Ridley, and in
half an hour you'll find it ready."

She turned him out of the room, and they could hear him groaning and
swearing as he went along the passage.

"I daresay he isn't very strong," said Mrs. Chailey, looking at Mrs.
Ambrose compassionately, as she helped to shift and carry.

"It's books," sighed Helen, lifting an armful of sad volumes from the
floor to the shelf. "Greek from morning to night. If ever Miss Rachel
marries, Chailey, pray that she may marry a man who doesn't know his
ABC."

The preliminary discomforts and harshnesses, which generally make the
first days of a sea voyage so cheerless and trying to the temper, being
somehow lived through, the succeeding days passed pleasantly enough.
October was well advanced, but steadily burning with a warmth that made
the early months of the summer appear very young and capricious. Great
tracts of the earth lay now beneath the autumn sun, and the whole of
England, from the bald moors to the Cornish rocks, was lit up from dawn
to sunset, and showed in stretches of yellow, green, and purple. Under
that illumination even the roofs of the great towns glittered. In
thousands of small gardens, millions of dark-red flowers were blooming,
until the old ladies who had tended them so carefully came down the
paths with their scissors, snipped through their juicy stalks, and laid