are fast
asleep; and perhaps that is the best thing for you; for sleep will (so I
am informed, though I never saw it happen, nor any one else) put fresh
gray matter into your brain; or save the wear and tear of the old gray
matter; or something else--when they have settled what it is to do: and
if so, you will wake up with a fresh fiddle-string to your little fiddle
of a brain, on which you are playing new tunes all day long. So much the
better: but when I believe that your brain is you, pretty boy, then I
shall believe also that the fiddler is his fiddle.

CHAPTER XII--HOMEWARD BOUND

Come: I suppose you consider yourself quite a good sailor by now?

Oh, yes. I have never been ill yet, though it has been quite rough again
and again.

What you call rough, little man. But as you are grown such a very good
sailor, and also as the sea is all but smooth, I think we will have a
sail in the yacht to-day, and that a tolerably long one.

Oh, how delightful! but I thought we were going home; and the things are
all packed up.

And why should we not go homewards in the yacht, things and all?

What, all the way to England?

No, not so far as that; but these kind people, when they came into the
harbour last night, offered to take us up the coast to a town, where we
will sleep, and start comfortably home to-morrow morning. So now you
will have a chance of seeing something of the great sea outside, and of
seeing, perhaps, the whale himself.

I hope we shall see the whale. The men say he has been outside the
harbour every day this week after the fish.

Very good. Now do you keep quiet, and out of the way, while we are
getting ready to go on board; and take a last look at this pretty place,
and all its dear kind people.

And the dear kind dogs too, and the cat and the kittens.

* * * * *

Now, come along, and bundle into the boat, if you have done bidding every
one good-bye; and take care you don't slip down in the ice-groovings, as
you did the other day. There, we are off at last.

Oh, look at them all on the rock watching us and waving their
handkerchiefs; and Harper and Paddy too, and little Jimsy and Isy, with
their fat bare feet, and their arms round the dogs' necks. I am so sorry
to leave them all.

Not sorry to go home?

No, but--They have been so kind; and the dogs were so kind. I am sure
they knew we were going, and were sorry too.

Perhaps they were. They knew we were going away, at all