efeated our hopes. For about half an hour the conversation ran
upon ordinary topics, but at last, we contrived, quite naturally, to
give it the following turn:

CAPT. PRATT. "Well I have been absent just one year.--Just one year
to-day, as I live--let me see! yes!--this is October the tenth. You
remember, Mr. Rumgudgeon, I called, this day year to bid you good-bye.
And by the way, it does seem something like a coincidence, does it
not--that our friend, Captain Smitherton, here, has been absent exactly
a year also--a year to-day!"

SMITHERTON. "Yes! just one year to a fraction. You will remember, Mr.
Rumgudgeon, that I called with Capt. Pratol on this very day, last year,
to pay my parting respects."

UNCLE. "Yes, yes, yes--I remember it very well--very queer indeed! Both
of you gone just one year. A very strange coincidence, indeed! Just what
Doctor Dubble L. Dee would denominate an extraordinary concurrence of
events. Doctor Dub-"

KATE. (Interrupting.) "To be sure, papa, it is something strange; but
then Captain Pratt and Captain Smitherton didn't go altogether the same
route, and that makes a difference, you know."

UNCLE. "I don't know any such thing, you huzzy! How should I? I think it
only makes the matter more remarkable, Doctor Dubble L. Dee--"

KATE. "Why, papa, Captain Pratt went round Cape Horn, and Captain
Smitherton doubled the Cape of Good Hope."

UNCLE. "Precisely!--the one went east and the other went west, you jade,
and they both have gone quite round the world. By the by, Doctor Dubble
L. Dee--"

MYSELF. (Hurriedly.) "Captain Pratt, you must come and spend the evening
with us to-morrow--you and Smitherton--you can tell us all about your
voyage, and well have a game of whist and--"

PRATT. "Wist, my dear fellow--you forget. To-morrow will be Sunday. Some
other evening--"

KATE. "Oh, no, fie!--Robert's not quite so bad as that. To-day's
Sunday."

PRATT. "I beg both your pardons--but I can't be so much mistaken. I know
to-morrow's Sunday, because-"

SMITHERTON. (Much surprised.) "What are you all thinking about? Wasn't
yesterday, Sunday, I should like to know?"

ALL. "Yesterday indeed! you are out!"

UNCLE. "To-days Sunday, I say--don't I know?"

PRATT. "Oh no!--to-morrow's Sunday."

SMITHERTON. "You are all mad--every one of you. I am as positive that
yesterday was Sunday as I am that I sit upon this chair."

KATE. (jumping up eagerly.) "I see it--I see it all. Papa, this is a
judg