in a very cheerful tone:

"I have had a windfall, Mrs. Bride--a windfall of thirty-five pounds.
It fell out of an auction-bridge tree--a game you do not
understand--and it has made the heat-wave, which ought to be called the
heat-flood, more unbearable than ever. Therefore I have resolved to go
away for a while to the sea."

"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly in a tone of amiable congratulation.

But her face fell a little; for though the departure of the Honourable
John Ruffin meant that she would have less work; it also meant that she
would have to spend more on food for herself and her little brother the
Lump, since the Honourable John Ruffin did not eat all his bread or
drink all his milk; and there was often half a cake with which he
refused to continue his afternoon tea on the ground that it was stale.
Besides, life was a far more cheerful business when he was at home; his
talk was Pollyooly's chief diversion, though she was hardly conscious
of the fact; and it frequently gave her to think deeply.

"But the thing that has kept me so long in London submerged in the
heat-flood has not been so much the want of money (I have had enough
for my own escape) as the great bacon difficulty," he said and paused.

"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly.

"But, thanks to this windfall, I can get over that difficulty by taking
you to the sea to grill my bacon for me, and the Lump to keep you
occupied while you are not grilling it, that Satan may not find some
mischief still for idle hands to do," he said sententiously.

Pollyooly's large blue eyes opened very wide; and her mouth opened too.

"Oh, sir, me and the Lump, sir!" she said in a hushed, breathless voice
of incredulous rapture.

"You and the Lump. The Lump and the sea were made for one another. I
look to see him an admiral one of these days. It is time that England
had a red-headed admiral; I'm tired of these refined, drab-haired ones.
It is my patriotic duty to give him a taste for the sea early."

"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Pollyooly in a tone of profound gratitude.

"We will go to Pyechurch. There's an old family servant of ours who
lets lodgings at Pyechurch. I made her life a burden to her when I was
young; and consequently, with true womanliness, she has always
entertained the strongest affection for me. It would be no use taking
you to any other lodgings because you wouldn't be allowed to grill my
bacon for me. But Mrs. Wilson knows that I must be humoured; and
h