in.

'Where's the good?' retorted the forlorn sage. 'She'd capter me agen.

'Try!' replied the Captain. 'Cheer up! Come! Now's your time. Sheer off,
Jack Bunsby!'

Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting by the advice, said in a
doleful whisper:

'It all began in that there chest o' yourn. Why did I ever conwoy her
into port that night?'

'My lad,' faltered the Captain, 'I thought as you had come over her; not
as she had come over you. A man as has got such opinions as you have!'

Mr Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan.

'Come!' said the Captain, nudging him with his elbow, 'now's your time!
Sheer off! I'll cover your retreat. The time's a flying. Bunsby! It's
for liberty. Will you once?'

Bunsby was immovable. 'Bunsby!' whispered the Captain, 'will you twice?'
Bunsby wouldn't twice.

'Bunsby!' urged the Captain, 'it's for liberty; will you three times?
Now or never!'

Bunsby didn't then, and didn't ever; for Mrs MacStinger immediately
afterwards married him.

One of the most frightful circumstances of the ceremony to the Captain,
was the deadly interest exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger; and the
fatal concentration of her faculties, with which that promising child,
already the image of her parent, observed the whole proceedings. The
Captain saw in this a succession of man-traps stretching out infinitely;
a series of ages of oppression and coercion, through which the seafaring
line was doomed. It was a more memorable sight than the unflinching
steadiness of Mrs Bokum and the other lady, the exultation of the
short gentleman in the tall hat, or even the fell inflexibility of Mrs
MacStinger. The Master MacStingers understood little of what was going
on, and cared less; being chiefly engaged, during the ceremony, in
treading on one another's half-boots; but the contrast afforded by
those wretched infants only set off and adorned the precocious woman in
Juliana. Another year or two, the Captain thought, and to lodge where
that child was, would be destruction.

The ceremony was concluded by a general spring of the young family on Mr
Bunsby, whom they hailed by the endearing name of father, and from
whom they solicited half-pence. These gushes of affection over, the
procession was about to issue forth again, when it was delayed for
some little time by an unexpected transport on the part of Alexander
MacStinger. That dear child, it seemed, connecting a chapel with
tombstones, when it was entered f