rs
as well as the wardroom fellows will be invited," he replied. "I
daresay they'll be able to spare you from your important duties aboard
for the occasion, and I'll try to smuggle you off myself if I can. By
Jove, it will be a splendid hop, for the Cape Town girls are chawming,
they tell me!"

I was not old enough yet, however, for this encomium of his on the young
ladies of the colony to be any inducement to me, and, to tell the truth,
was a little disappointed at hearing what his wonderful news was,
imagining it to have been something very different.

"Oh!" I said, without any improved enthusiasm, such as he doubtless
expected. "Thank you, sir."

"Well you _are_ an ungrateful young cub!" he cried. "Catch me putting
myself out of the way again to give you a treat! One would think from
your glum look that I was going to bring you up on the quarter-deck
before the captain, instead of offering to take you to the ball!"

I felt quite sorry at having hurt his feelings, he looked so chagrined;
but, before I could say anything in excuse for the apathetic way in
which I had received his intelligence, Mr Bitpin, who had overheard the
conversation, came to my rescue.

"Nonsense, Jellaby!" he said. "What can a boy like that know about
girls? Time enough for him to think of the petticoats when he's twenty
years older; and then he'll be a fool if he runs after them as much as
you do!"

"Ah, you're jealous, Bitpin, because you're not a lady's man!" retorted
Mr Jellaby, recovering his good humour in a moment, as he always did,
no matter how much he might be put out. "If you were as great a
favourite with them as I am, you'd sing a different song, I know."

"As great a fiddlestick!" ejaculated the other with infinite scorn,
having the reputation of being as much of a woman-hater as Diogenes.
"If I was as big an ass about those `chawming girls' as you call them, I
tell you what I would do--I'd go and hang myself!"

He said this so fervently, that, in spite of Mr Bitpin's burlesque of
his manner of speaking, "Joe" fairly roared with laughter, in which the
gunnery lieutenant, who had just come up from below to see about
something deficient in one of the upper deck guns, which had been
reported to him by Mr Triggs during the morning's inspection, joined
with much gusto.

Their merriment so enraged Mr Bitpin that he went down to the wardroom
in the most wrathful mood, declaring that they were a couple of idiots
and th