meat, I'm quite another man."

This amused her ladyship a little, but not so much as the postscript,
which was indeed the neatest thing in its way she had met with, and she
had some experience, too.

"P.S.--I say, Cicely, I think I should like to marry you. Would you
mind?"

Let us defy time and space to give you Lady Cicely's reply: "I should
enjoy it of all things, Taddy. But, alas! I am too young."

N.B.--She was twenty-seven, and Tad sixteen. To be sure, Tad was four
feet eleven, and she was only five feet six and a half.

To return to my narrative (with apologies), this meeting of the vessels
caused a very agreeable excitement that day; but a greater was in store.
In the afternoon, Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the
ship, being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of the
watch, and reported a large spar on the weather-bow.

"Well, close it, if you can; and let me know if it looks worth picking
up."

He then explained to Lord Tadcaster that, on a cruise, he never liked
to pass a spar, or anything that might possibly reveal the fate of some
vessel or other.

In the middle of his discourse the officer came in again, but not in
the same cool business way: he ran in excitedly, and said, "Captain, the