, suddenly began to display a deep interest in him--
in his clothes--in his linen; and Uncle Abram found her one day scolding
poor Amanda the maid till she put her apron over her head and sat down
on the floor and cried.

Uncle Abram stood smoking his pipe and sending puffs here and there as
Aunt Marion's tirade of bitterness went on.

"What's matter?" he said at last.

"Matter!" cried the old lady fiercely. "Matter enough. Here's this
thoughtless, careless hussy actually been throwing away some specimens
of ore that Will brought in. I declare it's monstrous--that it is."

Uncle Abram nodded solemnly, sent a puff of smoke to east, another to
west, and another due south, and then went out into his garden to tie up
an Ayrshire rose that had been blown down by a late gale.

"Wind's changed," he said to himself, "dead astarn; and our boy's v'y'ge
through life will be an easy one now."

Uncle Abram was right, for Mr Temple began to make quite a confidant of
Will Marion at once, and depended greatly upon him for help in his
business transactions over the kaolin and felspar upon his land.

Dick said it was a jolly shame, and Arthur considered it to be a
nuisance; but Mr Temple told them it was for their benefit, and to make
them more useful to him in time to come, so they had to go to a great
school for the next two years, at the end of which time the kaolin works
were in full swing, and Mr Temple, as he never forgot to say, thanks to
Will Marion, on the high road to fortune.

For while this tin mine proved a failure, and that copper mine had paid
no dividend for years, while the fisheries were sometimes successful,
sometimes, through storms and loss of gear, carried on at a loss, Mr
Temple's kaolin works became yearly more profitable, the vein growing
thicker and finer in quality the more it was opened out.

Kaolin--of course you all know what that Chinese word means. Eh? What?
A little boy at the back says he doesn't know? Then we must enlighten
him, and be a little learned for a minute or two.

Earthenware is of course ware made of earth that was ground into a
paste, and after working into shape, baked or burned hard in a kiln.
The roughest earthenware is a brick, the red brick of simple clay, the
yellow and white bricks of simple clay mixed with more or less chalk.
Then we get the flower-pot, again of clay; the common pan, which is
glazed by covering the interior with properly prepared minerals, which
melt