conveyed from
the front to the rear of the house.

Dr Lawrence and Emma walked round and round the garden very slowly,
conversing earnestly. Strange to say, they quite forgot the object
which had taken them there. Their talk was solely of Switzerland. As
it continued, the Doctor's voice deepened in tones and interest, and his
fair companion's cheek deepened in colour. Suddenly they turned into
the bower. As they did so, Gillie White chanced to appear at the garden
door above referred to, which stood ajar. The spider's countenance was
a speaking one. During the five minutes which it appeared in the
doorway, it, and the body belonging to it, became powerfully eloquent.
It might have conveyed to one's mind, as it were, a series of _tableaux
vivants_. Gillie's first look was as if he had been struck dumb with
amazement (that was Lawrence suddenly seizing one of Emma's hands in
both of his and looking intently into her face). Then Gillie's look of
amazement gave place to one of intense, quite touching--we might almost
say sympathetic--anxiety as he placed a hand on each knee and stooped
(that was the Doctor's right hand stealing round Emma's waist, and Emma
shrinking from him with averted face). The urchin's visage suddenly
lighted up with a blaze of triumph, and he seized his cap as if about to
cheer (that was the Doctor's superior strength prevailing, and Emma's
head, now turned the other way, laid on his shoulder). All at once
Gillie went into quiet convulsions, grinned from ear to ear, doubled
himself up, slapped his thigh inaudibly--_a la_ Captain Wopper--and
otherwise behaved like an outrageous, yet self-restrained, maniac (that
was--well, we have no right to say what _that_ was). As a faithful
chronicler, however, we must report that one-half minute later the
stooard found Captain Wopper in the villa drawing-room, and there stated
to him that it was "hall right; that he didn't need for to perplex
hisself about Doctor Lawrence and Miss Hemma Gray, for that they was as
good as spliced already, having been seen by him, Gillie, in the bower
at the end of the garding a-blushin' and a--" Here the spider stopped
short and went into another fit of convulsions--this time unrestrained.

Is it necessary to say that Captain Wopper sat at the foot of his own
table that day--Mrs Stoutley being at the head--with his rugged visage
radiant and his powerful voice explosive; that he told innumerable
sea-stories without poin