o he don't mind joking a bit
like.'

"Then the smile died away, and he added with a sigh, 'Yes, I've often
thought since, sir, how jolly it would have been if you could have seen
your way to making it Juliana.'

"I felt I must get him back to Hannah at any cost. I said, 'I suppose
you and your wife are still living in the old place?'

"'Yes,' he replied, 'if you can call it living. It's a hard struggle
with so many of us.'

"He said he did not know how he should have managed if it had not been
for the help of Julia's father. He said the captain had behaved more
like an angel than anything else he knew of.

"'I don't say as he's one of your clever sort, you know, sir,' he
explained. 'Not the man as one would go to for advice, like one would to
you, sir; but he's a good sort for all that.'

"'And that reminds me, sir,' he went on, 'of what I've come here about.
You'll think it very bold of me to ask, sir, but--'

"I interrupted him. 'Josiah,' I said, 'I admit that I am much to blame
for what has come upon you. You asked me for my advice, and I gave it
you. Which of us was the bigger idiot, we will not discuss. The point
is that I did give it, and I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities.
What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will give you.'

"He was overcome with gratitude. 'I knew it, sir,' he said. 'I knew you
would not refuse me. I said so to Hannah. I said, "I will go to that
gentleman and ask him. I will go to him and ask him for his advice."'

"I said, 'His what?'

"'His advice,' repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, 'on a
little matter as I can't quite make up my mind about.'

"I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn't. That
man sat there, and wrestled with me for my advice as to whether he should
invest a thousand dollars which Julia's father had offered to lend him,
in the purchase of a laundry business or a bar. He hadn't had enough of
it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it again, and he spun me reasons why I
should give it him. The choice of a wife was a different thing
altogether, he argued. Perhaps he ought _not_ to have asked me for my
opinion as to that. But advice as to which of two trades a man would do
best to select, surely any business man could give. He said he had just
been reading again my little book, _How to be Happy_, etc., and if the
gentleman who wrote that could not decide between the respective merits
of one particular