tom of the garden."

"Yes," continued the old sailor, "that's exactly what these much
exaggerated `remains' resembled more than anything else, I assure you,
ma'am. Of course, all these bits of earthenware were arranged in order
and labelled and all that; but I couldn't make head or tail of them."

"Perhaps you do not understand archaeology?" suggested Mrs Gilmour,
smiling at his description. "That's the rayson they didn't interest
you, sure!"

"P'r'aps not, ma'am," he replied with the utmost good temper. "I fancy
I know something of seamanship and a little about natural history, but
of most of the other 'ologies I confess my ignorance; and, for the life
of me, I can't see how some people can find anything to enjoy in the old
pots and pans of our great-great-grandfathers!"

"You forget the light which these relics throw on the manners and
customs of the ancients," argued the other. "There's a good deal of
information to be gleaned from their mute testimony sure, me dear
Captain."

"Information?" growled the Captain. "Fiddlesticks! And as for the
manners and customs of our ancestors; why, if all I have read be true,
they were uncommonly similar to the account given by a middy of the
natives of the Andaman Isles, as jotted down in his diary, `manners,
none--customs, beastly!'"

"That's shocking," exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, laughing. "But the criticism
will not apply to the Romans, who were almost as civilised and refined
as ourselves."

"And that's not saying much!" said the Captain with one of his sly
chuckles. "Faith we haven't any to boast of!"

"Speak for yourself," she retorted, "sure that's a very poor compliment
you're paying me."

"Present company always excepted," he replied, with an old-fashioned bow
like that of a courtier. "You know I didn't allude to you."

"I accept your apology, sir," said she with equally elaborate
politeness. "I would make you a curtsy if I were standing up, but you
wouldn't wish me to rise for the purpose. Did you not see, though,
anything at all like the ruins of a Roman villa or house at Brading?"

The Captain took a pinch of snuff, as if to digest the matter before
answering her question.

"Well, ma'am," he began, after a long pause of cogitation, "we were
shown some bits of brickwork, marked out in divisions like the
foundations of a house: and a place with a hole in the floor which, they
said, was a bath-room. We also saw a piece or two of tesselated
pavement,