he monkey if they likes!"

He had a sharp eye, had father, and had caught Mick winking at me.

So, there being now no longer any need, or indeed chance, of
concealment, especially with Jenny's eyes fixed on him, Mick thought it
best to make a clean breast of it at once.

"Coom down out o' thet, ye divvle. 'Tenshin, Jocko!" cried he, patting
his shoulder, to which his friend the monkey at once jumped from the
tree; and then, turning to my sister, he said, with a roguish look in
his black eyes, "Oi've brought ye a little prisint, Miss Jenny, ez Oi
hopes ez how ye'll be afther acceptin'."

Jenny smiled.

"What," said she--"a monkey?"

"No, Miss Jenny," replied Mick, grinning, while Jocko chattered in
sympathetic glee. "He ain't a monkey at all, at all. Sure, he's what I
calls a Saint Michael's canary!"

This was a settler for all of them; father leaning back in his chair and
holding his sides, while mother and Jenny enjoyed the joke as much as we
could both wish, `Ally Sloper' adding to the merriment of us all by
shrieking out at intervals alternately, "Say-rah! Say-rah!" and "Blest
if I don't have a smoke!" in father's very own voice.

On returning to the _Active_ after our leave was up, Mick and I were
sent to the guardship, or depot, having to leave our old ship through
getting our new rating as ordinary seamen, we having been drafted to her
as `boys'; for, being no longer held to be such, we, of course, had no
`local habitation or name,' according to the saying, on board her.

We did not have much of a stay at home, however, all the same, Mick
getting appointed within the next fortnight to the flagship on the Cape
station, when he and I parted for the first time since we became chums,
more than two years previously, on our joining the _Saint Vincent_
together.

A sailor's life, though, is made up of partings, not only with one
another, but with the old folks at home as well, and sometimes with
certain persons even dearer than these; so, wringing my hand in his
hearty grip and leaving a tender farewell for Jenny, whom he was unable
to see before going away, she being on a visit to a cousin of ours who
lived at Chichester, Mick and I said good-bye to one another. Really, I
envied his luck of getting the chance of seeing active service so soon!

I did not have to envy him long; for, a week later, I was turned over to
the _Mermaid_, a new second-class cruiser just commissioned to join the
eastern division