difficult to obtain as tears of genuine sympathy!

"How would you like to go with me to the whale-fishery?" inquired
Captain Dunning, somewhat abruptly as he disengaged the child's arms and
set her on his knee.

The tears stopped in an instant, as Alice leaped, with the happy
facility of childhood, totally out of one idea and thoroughly into
another.

"Oh, I should like it _so_ much!"

"And how much is `so' much, Ailie?" inquired the captain.

Ailie pursed her mouth, and looked at her father earnestly, while she
seemed to struggle to give utterance to some fleeting idea.

"Think," she said quickly, "think something good _as much as ever you
can_. Have you thought?"

"Yes," answered the captain, smiling.

"Then," continued Ailie, "its twenty thousand million times as much as
that, and a great deal more!"

The laugh with which Captain Dunning received this curious explanation
of how much his little daughter wished to go with him to the
whale-fishery, was interrupted by the entrance of his sisters, whose
sense of propriety induced them to keep all visitors waiting at least a
quarter of an hour before they appeared, lest they should be charged
with unbecoming precipitancy.

"Here you are, lassies; how are ye?" cried the captain as he rose and
kissed each lady on the cheek heartily.

The sisters did not remonstrate. They knew that their brother was past
hope in this respect, and they loved him, so they suffered it meekly.

Having admitted that they were well--as well, at least, as could be
expected, considering the cataract of "trials" that perpetually
descended upon their devoted heads--they sat down as primly as if their
visitor were a perfect stranger, and entered into a somewhat lengthened
conversation as to the intended voyage, commencing, of course, with the
weather.

"And now," said the captain, rubbing the crown of his straw hat in a
circular manner, as if it were a beaver, "I'm coming to the point."

Both ladies exclaimed, "What point, George?" simultaneously, and
regarded the captain with a look of anxious surprise.

"_The_ point," replied the captain, "about which I've come here to-day.
It ain't a point o' the compass; nevertheless, I've been steerin' it in
my mind's eye for a considerable time past. The fact is" (here the
captain hesitated), "I--I've made up my mind to take my little Alice
along with me this voyage."

The Misses Dunning wore unusually tall caps, and their countenances wer