you like to see them, and
judge for yourself?"

"Oh! if it is not giving you too much trouble," he exclaimed,
gratefully, with shining eyes. "It's very kind of you. I did not like to
ask. Have you got them with you?"

I nodded, and proceeded to unbutton my coat.

At that moment a voice was heard shouting down the companion-ladder:
"Carr! I say, Carr, you are wanted!" and in another moment some one was
hammering on the door.

Carr sprang to his feet, looking positively savage.

"Carr!" shouted the voice again. "Come out, I say; you are wanted!"

"Button up your coat," he whispered, scowling suddenly; and with an oath
he opened the door.

Poor Carr! He was quite put out, I could see, though he recovered
himself in a moment, and went off laughing with the man, who had been
sent for him to take his part in a rehearsal which had been suddenly
resolved on; for theatricals had been brewing for some time, and he had
promised to act in them. I had not been asked to join, so I saw no more
of him that night. The following morning, as I was taking an early turn
on the deck, he joined me, and said, with a smile, as he linked his arm
in mine, "I was put out last night, wasn't I?"

"But you got over it in a moment," I replied. "I quite admired you; and,
after all, you know--some other time."

"No," he said, smiling still, "not some other time. I don't think I will
see them--thanks all the same. They might put me out of conceit with
what I have picked up for my little girl, which are the best I can
afford."

He seemed to have lost all interest in the subject, for he began to talk
of England, and of London, about which he appeared to have that kind of
vague half-and-half knowledge which so often proves misleading to young
men newly launched into town life. When he found out, as he soon did,
that I was, to a certain extent, familiar with the metropolis, he began
to question me minutely, and ended by making me promise to dine with him
at the Criterion, of which he had actually never heard, and go with him
afterwards to the best of the theatres the day after we arrived in
London.

He wanted me to go with him the very evening we arrived, but on that
point I was firm. My sister Jane, who was living with a hen canary
(called Bob, after me, before its sex was known) in a small house in
Kensington, would naturally be hurt if I did not spend my first evening
in England with her, after an absence of so many years.

Carr was much