s last quarter.

"How did you get it, Ethel? do you keep the purse?"

"No, but papa took Cocksmoor in your stead, when--"

"Nonsense, Ethel," said Harry; "I don't want it. Have I not all my
pay and allowance for the whole time I was dead? And as to robbing
Cocksmoor--"

"Yes, keep it, Ethel," said her father; "do you think I would take it
now, when if there were a thank-offering in the world.--And, by the bye,
your Cocksmoor children must have something to remember this by--"

Every one could have envied Norman, for travelling to London with Harry,
but that he must proceed to Oxford in two days, when Harry would return
to them. The station-master, thinking he could not do enough for the
returned mariner, put the two brothers into the coupe, as if they had
been a bridal couple, and they were very glad of the privacy, having, as
yet, hardly spoken to each other, when Harry's attention was dispersed
among so many.

Norman asked many questions about the mission work in the southern
hemisphere, and ended by telling his brother of his design, which met
with Harry's hearty approbation.

"That's right, old June. There's nothing they want so much, as such as
you. How glad my aunt will be! Perhaps you will see David! Oh, if you
were to go out to the Loyalty group!"

"Very possibly I might," said Norman.

"Tell them you are my brother, and how they will receive you! I can see
the mop-heads they will dress in honour of you, and what a feast of pork
and yams you will have to eat! But there is plenty of work among the
Maoris for you--they want a clergyman terribly at the next village to
my uncle's place. I say, Norman, it will go hard if I don't get a ship
bound for the Pacific, and come and see you."

"I shall reckon on you. That is, if I have not to stay to help my
father."

"To be sure," exclaimed Harry; "I thought you would have stayed at home,
and married little Miss Rivers!"

Thus broadly and boyishly did he plunge into that most tender subject,
making his brother start and wince, as if he had touched a wound.

"Nonsense!" he cried, almost angrily.

"Well! you used to seem very much smitten, but so, to be sure, were
some of the Alcestes with the young ladies at Valparaiso. How we used to
roast Owen about that Spanish Donna, and he was as bad at Sydney about
the young lady whose father, we told him, was a convict, though he kept
such a swell carriage. He had no peace about his father-in-law, the
house-breaker!