now! I'm going to stay with The Man!' Presently
Mrs. Stonehouse, who had been thinking of ways and means, and of the
comfort of the strange man who had been so good to her child, said:

'You will sleep with mother to-night, darling. Mr. . . . The Man,' she
said this with an appealing look of apology to Harold, 'The Man will stay
by you till you are asleep . . . ' But she interrupted, not fretfully or
argumentatively, but with a settled air of content:

'No! I'm going to sleep with The Man!'

'But, dear one,' the mother expostulated, 'The Man will want sleep too.'

'All right, mother. He can sleep too. I'll be very good and lie quite
quiet; but oh! mother, I can't sleep unless his arms are round me. I'm
afraid if they're not the sea will get me!' and she clung closer to
Harold, tightening her arms round his neck.

'You will not mind?' asked Mrs. Stonehouse timidly to Harold; and, seeing
acquiescence in his face, added in a burst of tearful gratitude:

'Oh! you are good to her to us all!'

'Hush!' Harold said quietly. Then he said to Pearl, in a cheerful matter-
of-fact way which carried conviction to the child's mind:

'Now, darling, it is time for all good little girls to be asleep,
especially when they have had an--an interesting day. You wait here till
I put my pyjamas on, and then I'll come back for you. And mother and
father shall come and see you nicely tucked in!'

'Don't be long!' the child anxiously called after him as he hurried away.
Even trust can have its doubts.

In a few minutes Harold was back, in pyjamas and slipper and a dressing-
gown. Pearl, already wrapped in a warm shawl by her mother, held out her
arms to Harold, who lifted her.

The Stonehouses' suite of rooms was close to the top of the companion-
way, and as Harold's stateroom was on the saloon deck, the little
procession had, much to the man's concern, run the gauntlet of the thong
of passengers whom the bad weather had kept indoors. When he came out of
the day cabin carrying the child there was a rush of all the women to
make much of the little girl. They were all very kind and no
troublesome; their interest was natural enough, and Harold stopped whilst
they petted the little thing.

The little procession followed. Mr. and Mrs. Stonehouse coming next, and
last the nurse, who manifested a phase of the anxiety of a hen who sees
her foster ducklings waddling toward a pond.

When Harold was in his bunk the little maid