tairs? Very good. You may lend me your candle. My
dear girl, Mrs. Wragge's boudoir is on the first floor; Mrs. Wragge is
visible. Allow me to show you the way up."

As he ascended the stairs first, the care-worn widow whispered,
piteously, to Magdalen, "I hope you'll pay me, miss. Your uncle
doesn't."

The captain threw open the door of the front room on the first
floor, and disclosed a female figure, arrayed in a gown of tarnished
amber-colored satin, seated solitary on a small chair, with dingy old
gloves on its hands, with a tattered old book on its knees, and with one
little bedroom candle by its side. The figure terminated at its upper
extremity in a large, smooth, white round face--like a moon--encircled
by a cap and green ribbons, and dimly irradiated by eyes of mild and
faded blue, which looked straightforward into vacancy, and took not the
smallest notice of Magdalen's appearance, on the opening of the door.

"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain, shouting at her as if she was fast
asleep. "Mrs. Wragge!"

The lady of the faded blue eyes slowly rose to an apparently
interminable height. When she had at last attained an upright position,
she towered to a stature of two or three inches over six feet. Giants of
both sexes are, by a wise dispensation of Providence, created, for the
most part, gentle. If Mrs. Wragge and a lamb had been placed side by
side, comparison, under those circumstances, would have exposed the lamb
as a rank impostor.

"Tea, captain?" inquired Mrs. Wragge, looking submissively down at
her husband, whose head, when he stood on tiptoe, barely reached her
shoulder.

"Miss Vanstone, the younger," said the captain, presenting Magdalen.
"Our fair relative, whom I have met by fortunate accident. Our guest for
the night. Our guest!" reiterated the captain, shouting once more as if
the tall lady was still fast asleep, in spite of the plain testimony of
her own eyes to the contrary.

A smile expressed itself (in faint outline) on the large vacant space of
Mrs. Wragge's countenance. "Oh?" she said, interrogatively. "Oh, indeed?
Please, miss, will you sit down? I'm sorry--no, I don't mean I'm sorry;
I mean I'm glad--" she stopped, and consulted her husband by a helpless
look.

"Glad, of course!" shouted the captain.

"Glad, of course," echoed the giantess of the amber satin, more meekly
than ever.

"Mrs. Wragge is not deaf," explained the captain. "She's only a little
slow. Constitutionally torpi