d the
first thing I tells you to do you kicks."

"I am very busy," said my father. "If you two want a holiday, say so."

"Holiday, sir? Not us," said Morgan, in a hesitating way. "We don't
want no holiday, sir, only we felt like as it was our dooty to tell you
what--"

"To tell me what?"

"Yes, sir; seeing as we were going out to a savage country, where you've
got to do everything yourself before you can have it, and as there'd be
no parsons and churches, we thought we'd get it done decent and
'spectable here first."

"My good fellow, what do you mean?" said my father.

"Why, what I've been telling of you, sir. Sarah says--"

"I did not, Morgan, and I shouldn't have thought of such a thing. It
was all your doing."

"Steady in the ranks, my lass. Be fair. I'll own to half of it, but
you know you were just as bad as me."

"I was not, sir, indeed," cried Sarah, beginning to sob. "He deluded me
into it, and almost forced me to say yes."

"Man's dooty," said Morgan, dryly.

"What!" cried my father, smiling; "have you two gone and been married?"

"Stop there, sir, please, begging your pardon," said Morgan; "I declare
to gootness, you couldn't make a better guess than that."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Sarah, who was very red in the face
before, but scarlet now; and as I sit down and write all this, as an old
man, everything comes back to me as vividly as if it were only
yesterday--for though I have forgotten plenty of my later life, all this
is as fresh as can be--"I beg your pardon, sir, but as you know all the
years I have been in your service, and with my own dear angel of a
mistress--Heaven bless her!"

"Amen," said my father, and, stern soldier as he was, I saw the tears
stand thick in his eyes, for poor Sarah broke down and began to sob,
while Morgan turned his face and began to blow his nose like a trumpet
out of tune.

"I--I beg your pardon for crying, sir, and it's very weak, I own,"
continued Sarah, after a few minutes' interval, during which I hurriedly
put my arm round her, and she dabbed down and kissed me, leaving my face
very wet; "but you know I never meant to be married, but when Morgan
comes to me and talks about what I was thinking about--how you and that
poor darling motherless boy was to get on in foreign abroad, all amongst
wild beasts and savages, and no one to make a drop o' gruel if you had
colds, or to make your beds, or sew on a button, and your poor stockings
all in