whose vows of love could not have excelled in fervent expression the
good wishes of the writer for the happiness of the betrothed pair. He
hoped to have the pleasure of seeing his dear old friend on the
following day, or the day after that at latest; and he promised himself
the satisfaction of squandering his saved pay on such a wedding present
as would at least cover the cost of the bread and milk the boy had
devoured at her expense. Guthrie dropped his letter in the post-bag
while they were calling to him that it was time to start. And he turned
the key of silence upon his secret until he could pour it into the
right ear.

It was a wonder he did not pour it into Mary's, for she drove
him to Bundaboo, and nobody could have been more sympathetic than she.
She was the virtual mother of the family, who loved children, and she
was not--she could not be--a husband-hunter; a sensible man in
domestic difficulties could not have sought a wiser confidante. Yet he
resisted stubbornly all her gentle invitations to confide. In the first
place, he did not want to go with her in the pony-carriage, while Deb
and Dalzell rode. He did not like to see it taken for granted, as it
seemed to be by all, that a sailor on horseback must necessarily make a
fool of himself; the slight to his self-respect was enough to dull the
edge of his joy in the general merchant's proceedings--for, as the
reader will remember, he was still but three-and-twenty.

He had to weigh down the springs of a little basket thing no better
than an invalid's wheel-chair, and see the young exquisite, whom he
could have tossed over his shoulder with one hand, show off feats of
fancy horsemanship to make Deb's dark eyes kindle. Mr Pennycuick had
carelessly asked Billy's degenerate son to "school a bit" a creature
which for weeks had not allowed a man upon his back, and had had no