aiting for--ay, and well deserves."

"You're always in such a desperate hurry," observed the Honourable John,
ignoring the epithets with which we assailed him. He was never offended,
and never perturbed. When the vials of our wrath were poured upon him,
as they had been pretty freely during the holiday, they ran off him
like the proverbial water from the duck's back. We simply could not have
endured his foppishness and dandyism, combined with a temper always
serene, if we had not known that at heart he was a very good fellow. "I
was in time," said he.

"You were," returned Syd significantly--"nearly in time to be late."

"But I wasn't late," drawled John, "so what's the good of making a fuss
about it. One of the pleasures of life is to take things easily; as my
friend the Irishman once remarked, 'If ye cannot be happy, be aisy; and
if ye cannot be aisy, be as aisy as ye can.' But, I say, I don't call
this a specially bright morning; do you? Look there! We're running into
a bank of fog."

So we were. A dense white barrier, clean and straight as a wall, rose
from the sea to the sky, and in another minute we had plunged into it.
We did not anticipate so sudden a change. Fog was far from our thoughts,
for the morning had been bright and sunny all around the islands, and
the air was very still. For two or three days scarcely a breath of wind
had wandered across the brilliant summer atmosphere. Now, with the fog,
came a softly moving breeze out of the north-east. The fog drifted
before it in one immense mass; there was no ripple upon the sea.

Upon the passengers the effect was very curious; where, a few moments
before, there had been ready repartee, interspersed with laughter, now
there was low-toned commonplace conversation, or a dead silence. We were
wrapped in a cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the
stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part
of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even
upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save
for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a
whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we
could scarcely see the length of the ship.

It was the first bit of objectionable weather we had experienced during
the holiday. We had spent a fortnight in the "Delectable Duchy." From
Looe to Sennen we had not missed a single place worth seeing, and we had
finis