sionally, just to show what he could do if he had a mind
to and was not socially disposed.

But he never nipped Jenny's little fingers--not he!

On the contrary, he used to dance with delight if she only uttered his
name in a whisper, chuckling first to express his great pleasure at the
sight of her, and then breaking into a regular roulade that wound up
with the call `Jenny! Jenny!' or something which we all thought sounded
uncommonly like it; for he used to keep it up for a good spell if she
went away without speaking to him, or even failed to put in an
appearance to wish him "good morning."

Avast there, however.

I'm afraid I am making a long circumbendibus from my original yarn; but,
as mother says of father, it runs in the blood, all the Bowlings having
their jaw tackle well abreast, and not knowing when to stop when once
they begin; so, being a `chip of the old block' and a Bowling all over
in my love of talking and love for the sea, I hope you will excuse me
and let me start afresh again.

I was saying when I went off my course on this tangent about the birds,
that little Jenny stepped in just as father and mother were getting to
loggerheads about my going on board the _Saint Vincent_, the old lady
saying she couldn't possibly spare me, and that he, to put it mildly,
was not a very sensible person to think so lightly of losing my services
in the wherry just when I was beginning, as she pointed out to him, to
be of some use to him.

"But it's no good my talking," she cried at the end of a long harangue,
to which father politely listened, with his knife and fork expectantly
in hand, and his dinner getting colder and colder on the plate before
him. "It's just like you Bowlings all over! You're all headstrong and
foolish, and always bent on having your own way, in spite of all the
good advice one gives you!"

"All right, Sarah," said father, in his quiet way, bowing, wise man that
he was, before the storm. "All right."

"No, it's nothing of the sort," retorted mother. "It's all wrong!"

At that moment a happy diversion was made by the lemon-crested cockatoo,
who, by reason of his highly respectable deportment and polished
manners, had been made free of our parlour, and could hop in and out
from the shop when the mood seized him, through a small trapdoor or
porthole, originally constructed for a window, and which served `Ally
Sloper' as a means of intercommunication between the two apartments, the
wil