"If I don't like your medicines any better than those, I shall throw
them into the garden, and then what will you do?"

"When I prescribe such rubbish, I'll give you leave to pitch it
overboard as soon as you like. Now what is the next trouble?"

"I hoped you would forget to ask."

"But how can I help you if I don't know them? Come, let us have
No. 3."

"It is very wrong, I suppose, but I do sometimes wish I had not
quite so many aunts. They are all very good to me, and I want to
please them; but they are so different, I feel sort of pulled to pieces
among them," said Rose, trying to express the emotions of a stray
chicken with six hens all clucking over it at once.

Uncle Alec threw back his head and laughed like a boy, for he
could entirely understand how the good ladies had each put in her
oar and tried to paddle her own way, to the great disturbance of the
waters and the entire bewilderment of poor Rose.

"I intend to try a course of uncles now, and see how that suits your
constitution. I'm going to have you all to myself, and no one is to
give a word of advice unless I ask it. There is no other way to keep
order aboard, and I am captain of this little craft, for a time at
least. What comes next?"

But Rose stuck there, and grew so red, her uncle guessed what that