"Well, we shall see," her father answered. "My business has been upon
the coast so much, that I know very little about Stonnington. But
Scudamore has such a happy nature that nothing would come much amiss to
him. You know why he is here, of course?"

"No, I don't, papa. You are getting so mysterious that you never tell us
anything now," replied Dolly. "I only know that he was in the navy, and
now he is in a grammar school. The last time I saw him he was about a
yard high."

"He is a good bit short of two yards now," said the Admiral, smiling as
he thought of him, "but quite tall enough for a sailor, Dolly, and the
most active young man I ever saw in my life, every inch of him sound and
quick and true. I shall think very little of your judgment unless you
like him heartily; not at first, perhaps, because he is so shy, but as
soon as you begin to know him. I mean to ask him to come down as soon
as he can get a holiday. His captain told me, when he served in the
Diomede, that there was not a man in the ship to come near him for
nimbleness and quiet fearlessness."

"Then what made him take to his books again? Oh, how terribly dull he
must find them! Why, that must be Stonnington church, on the hill!"

"Yes, and the old grammar school close by. I was very near going there
once myself, but they sent me to Winchester instead. It was partly
through me that he got his berth here, though not much to thank me for,
I am afraid. Sixty pounds a year and his rations isn't much for a man
who has been at Cambridge. But even that he could not get in the navy
when the slack time came last year. He held no commission, like many
other fine young fellows, but had entered as a first-class volunteer.