diversion.

'So you would not enter us on board the Eliza Priscilla?' cried Louis.

'No, no,' said the old man, shrewdly, and with an air of holding
something back; whereupon they both pressed him, and obtained for
answer, 'No, no, I wouldn't sail with you'--signing towards
Fitzjocelyn--'in my crew: ye'd be more trouble than ye're worth. And
as to you, sir, if I wouldn't sail with ye, I'd like still less to sail
under you.'

He finished with a droll, deprecating glance, and Louis laughed
heartily; but James was silent, and as soon as they had entered the
little parlour, declared that it would not do to encourage that old
skipper--he was waylaying them like the Ancient Mariner, and was
actually growing impudent.

'An old man's opinion of two youngsters is not what I call impudence,'
began Louis, with an emphasis that made Jem divert his attack.

Those two cousins had never spent a happier month than in these small
lodgings, built by the old retired merchant-seaman evidently on the
model of that pride of his heart, the Eliza Priscilla, his little
coasting trader, now the charge of his only surviving son; for this was
a family where drowning was like a natural death, and old Captain
Hannaford looked on the probability of sleeping in Ebbscreek
churchyard, much as Bayard did at the prospect of dying in his bed. His
old deaf wife kept the little cabin-like rooms most exquisitely neat;
and the twelve-years-old Priscilla, the orphan of one of the lost sons,
waited on the gentlemen with an old-fashioned, womanly deportment and
staid countenance that, in the absence of all other grounds of
distress, Louis declared was quite a pain to him.

The novelty of the place, the absence of restraint, the easy life, and,
above all, the freshness of returning health, rendered his spirits
exceedingly high, and he had never been more light-hearted and full of
mirth. James, elated at his rapid improvement, was scarcely less full
of liveliness and frolic, enjoying to the utmost the holiday, which
perhaps both secretly felt might be the farewell to the perfect
carelessness of boyish relaxation. Bathing, boating, fishing,
dabbling, were the order of the day, and withal just enough quarrelling
and teasing to add a little spice to their pleasures. Louis was over
head and ears in maritime natural history; but Jem, backed by Mrs.
Hannaford, prohibited his 'messes' from making a permanent settlement
in the parlour; though festoons of seaweed