"Catch me rubbing it out!" cried Johnny; "it's the best sketch that ever
I drew, and as like the old savage as it can stare!"

Late in the evening their mother returned from Brampton, where she had
been nursing a sick lady. Right glad were Johnny and Alie to see her
sooner than they had ventured to expect. She brought them a few oranges,
to show her remembrance of them. Nor was the old sailor forgotten;
carefully she drew from her bag and presented to him a new pipe.

The children glanced at each other. Jonas took the pipe with a curious
expression on his face, which his sister was at a loss to understand.

"Thank'ee kindly," he said; "I see it'll be a case of--

"'If ye try and don't succeed,
Try, try, try again.'"

What he meant was a riddle to every one else present, although not to
the reader.

The "try" was very successful on that evening and the following day.
Never had Johnny and Alie found their uncle so agreeable. His manner
almost approached to gentleness,--it was a calm after a storm.

"Uncle is so very good and kind," said Alie to her brother, as they
walked home from afternoon service, "that I wonder how you can bear to
have that naughty picture still in your book. He is not in the least
like a cannibal, and it seems quite wrong to laugh at him so."