ould not help looking into all the
windows of the various cottages they passed, just to ascertain if that
was the one inhabited by his dear old granny or not.

At last he turned to Harry. "I think, mate, we have run our distance,"
he observed; "we ought to be in the latitude of Paradise Row by this
time. I'll just step up to that pretty little cottage there and ask.
Here, Harry, just hold Chatterbox, please."

Suiting the action to the word, having given his parrot to his friend,
up to the cottage he went. It had a porch in front of it, covered with
jasmine, and a neat verandah, and was altogether a very tasty though
unpretending little abode. He rapped at the door with a
strangely-carved shark's tooth which he held in his hand. After waiting
a little time, the door was opened, and, without looking directly at the
person who opened it, he began, "Please, marm, does Mrs Pringle live
hereabouts?" Then, suddenly he was heard to exclaim, "What--it is--
Mary, Mary!"

What more he said his friends did not hear, for the door was nearly
closed as he sprang into the house. However, both Harry and Sam were
very discreet people, and they had heard enough to show them that their
presence could easily be dispensed with; so, as there was a nice grassy
bank under a widespreading tree, they, with the two seamen carrying the
bags, and the monkey and the parrots, went and sat down there to wait
till the boatswain might recollect that there were such beings in
existence.

Harry felt very glad that his friend was likely to be so happy, and old
Sam amused himself with scratching the monkey's head, making him hang by
his tail, and jump over his own wooden leg, while the seamen went to
sleep with their heads on the bags. Sam was the first to grow tired of
his amusement, and, getting up, he stumped up towards the cottage and
peeped over the neat white blind of the front window.

He came back grinning and chuckling. "All right," he said. "Him bery
happy--no tink of us yet, I guess."

Whether or not the apparition of Sam's black visage had been seen does
not appear; but in a short time True Blue came to the door of the
cottage, looking as happy and lighthearted as a fellow could look, and,
hailing his friends, asked them to step in.

Mrs Ogle was there, and Mary, and a younger sister very like her; but
Peter was aboard his ship, a seventy-four, in Portsmouth Harbour; and
Mary and her sister, and their mother, shook hands hearti