to him from the time he went aboard the _Sparrow-hawk_, and concluded by
asking the bow-legged cook not to mention to Skipper Drummond, if he met
him during the next few days, that he had seen him and Ping Wang.

Charlie and Ping Wang shook hands with the cook and left him.

'Now,' Charlie said, 'we must go to a cheap tailor's. I think that I
have enough money to buy a ready-made suit for each of us.'

'Perhaps the tailor will give us something for the coper's things,' Ping
Wang remarked. 'You paid enough for them.'

'I did, and if I tell a tailor, or any one else, what I gave for them, I
shall be thought a madman.'

Half-a-crown was the value which the Grimsby tailor placed upon the
clothes which Charlie and Ping Wang were wearing. The new clothes which
they purchased were rather loud in pattern, and by no means a good fit,
but they were cheap, and a great improvement on the things which they
had taken off.

After surveying themselves in the glass--and immediately wishing that
they had not done so--they quitted the shop and made their way to the
railway station, to start for Charlie's home.

(_Continued on page 266._)

JACK'S WISH.

'Oh, how I wish,' cried Jack, one day,
'That I was grown up quite,
For then I should not go to school,
Or have to keep some silly rule.
I'm sure they're made in spite.
Why should I go to bed at eight,
If I desire to sit up late?'

'Oh, very well,' his father said;
'Go to the Bank for me,
And sit, as I do, all day long--
I think you soon would change your song,
And long at school to be.
Just try to be content, my boy,
And then your life you will enjoy.'

A TIMELY RESCUE.

'It looks just as if we were going to have a thunder-shower,' Mrs.
Marston said. 'I wish, George, you would find Rose and Elsie, and tell
them to come home.'

'But I don't know where to look for them,' George said.

'They are certain to be somewhere in the fields. And take an umbrella
with you. Elsie has such a bad cold, I shall be vexed if she gets wet.'

'Oh, Mother, I don't believe it will rain, and I do want to finish
painting this rabbit-hutch! It is such a nuisance to leave things half
done.'

'My boy, it is not right to argue with your mother when she asks you to
do something for her.'

'Bother those kids,' George muttered crossly, as he went off, grumbling,
to hunt for an umbrella.

It was a hot, thundery da