ng about that tea. I wonder you never heard
him."

"I have not, to my knowledge."

"No? Well, at last, finding it couldn't be bought in England, he sent
across for a chest. We had the invoice a few days ago, and here it
is."

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys produced a scrap of paper, and went on--

"You see, it's coming in a ship called the _Maryland_, and ought to
be here about this time. Well, Fred was looking through his
telescope before breakfast this morning--he's always looking through
a telescope now, and knows, I believe, every rig of every vessel in
the world--when he calls out, 'Hullo! American barque!' in his short
way. Of course, I didn't know at first what he meant, and mixed it
up with that stuff--Peruvian bark, isn't it?--that you give to your
child, if you have one, and do not let it untimely die, or something
of the sort. But afterwards he shouted, 'I shouldn't wonder if she's
the _Maryland_;' and then I understood, and it struck me that it
would be so nice to come to you and pay the 'duty,' or whatever you
call it, on the tea, and at the same time, if you were very good, you
would take me over the ship with you, and show me how you did your
work. It's very complicated, I daresay: but I'll be quiet as a
mouse, and won't interrupt you at all."

She paused for breath. The Collector smiled, and handed back the
invoice.

"It seems all right," he said. "Let us hurry to the Custom House.
An hour in your company, Geraldine, will transfigure even the dull
round of duty."

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys smiled back divinely. She thought it extremely
probable.

A few minutes later the poet sat by Geraldine's side--sweet
proximity!--in the stern of one of Her Majesty's boats, while two
"minions," as he was wont in verse to term his subordinates, rowed
them towards a shapely barque that had just dropped anchor not far
from the Bower Slip.

She flew a yellow flag in sign that she hailed from a foreign port,
and as the Customs' boat dropped under her quarter Mr. Moggridge
shouted--

"_Maryland_, ahoy!"

"Ahoy!" answered a gruff voice, and a red face looked over the side.

"Captain?" inquired Mr. Moggridge.

"That's me--Uriah T. Potter, Cap'n. Customs, I guess," said the
red-faced man, with a slow look at Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys.

"Clean bill of health?"

"Waal, two fo'c's'le hands down with whoopin'-cough: take it you
won't keep us in quarantine for that."

The Collector helped Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys up the ship'