wo sisters, who stood listening to him with their long
dark shadows streaming down the lawn behind them. The girls were dressed
alike in dark skirts, with light pink tennis blouses and pink bands on
their straw hats, so that as they stood with the soft red of the setting
sun tinging their faces, Clara, demure and quiet, Ida, mischievous
and daring, it was a group which might have pleased the eye of a more
exacting critic than the old sailor.

"Yes, he looks happy, mother," he repeated, with a chuckle. "It is not
so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I
don't remember that we were very unhappy either. It was croquet in our
time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut. What
year would it be? Just before the commission of the Penelope."

Mrs. Hay Denver ran her fingers through his grizzled hair. "It was when
you came back in the Antelope, just before you got your step."

"Ah, the old Antelope! What a clipper she was! She could sail two
points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service. You
remember her, mother. You saw her come into Plymouth Bay. Wasn't she a
beauty?"

"She was indeed, dear. But when I say that I think that Harold is not
happy I mean in his daily life. Has it never struck you how thoughtful,
he is at times, and how absent-minded?"

"In love perhaps, the young dog. He seems to have found snug moorings
now at any rate."

"I think that it is very likely that you are right, Willy," answered the
mother seriously. "But with which of them?"

"I cannot tell."

"Well, they are very charming girls, both of them. But as long as he
hangs in the wind between the two it cannot be serious. After all, the
boy is four-and-twenty, and he made five hundred pounds last year. He is
better able to marry than I was when I was lieutenant."

"I think that we can see which it is now," remarked the observant
mother. Charles Westmacott had ceased to knock the tennis balls about,
and was chatting with Clara Walker, while Ida and Harold Denver
were still talking by the railing with little outbursts of laughter.
Presently a fresh set was formed, and Doctor Walker, the odd man out,
came through the wicket gate and strolled up the garden walk.

"Good evening, Mrs. Hay Denver," said he, raising his broad straw hat.
"May I come in?"

"Good evening, Doctor! Pray do!"

"Try one of these," said the Admiral, holding out his cigar-case.
"They are not bad. I got the