liament, because not only do you have the
current speaker, but interspersed with it are comments by the raconteur
and by the noisier of the boys. The printed book settled for a
simplified version here, but we have done our best to give you a
version that is more according to rule.
________________________________________________________________________
THE WILLOUGHBY CAPTAINS

BY TALBOT BAINES REED

CHAPTER ONE.

THE LAST OF THE OLD CAPTAIN.

Something unusual is happening at Willoughby. The Union Jack floats
proudly over the old ivy-covered tower of the school, the schoolrooms
are deserted, there is a band playing somewhere, a double row of
carriages is drawn up round the large meadow (familiarly called "The
Big"), old Mrs Gallop, the orange and sherbert woman, is almost beside
herself with business flurry, and boys are going hither and thither,
some of them in white ducks with favours on their sleeves, and others in
their Sunday "tiles," with sisters and cousins and aunts in tow, whose
presence adds greatly to the brightness of the scene.

Among these last-named holiday-making young Willoughbites no one parades
more triumphantly to-day than Master Cusack, of Welch's House, by the
side of his father, Captain Cusack, R.N. Cusack, ever since he came to
Willoughby, has bored friend and foe with endless references to "the
gov., captain in the R.N., you know," and now that he really has a
chance of showing off his parent in the flesh his small head is nearly
turned. He puffs along like a small steam-tug with a glorious man-of-
war in tow, and is too anxious to exhibit his prize in "The Big" to do
even the ordinary honours of the place to his relative.

Captain Cusack, R.N., the meekest and most amiable of men, resigns
himself pleasantly to the will of his dutiful conductor, only too
pleased to see the boy so happy, and pardonably gratified to know that
he himself is the special object of that young gentleman's jubilation.
He had come down, hoping for a quiet hour or two to see his boy and
inspect Willoughby, but he finds that, instead, he is to be inspected
himself, and, though he wouldn't thwart the lad for the world, he would
just as soon have dropped in at Willoughby on a rather less public
occasion.

Young Cusack, as is the manner of small tugs, assumes complete control
of his parent and rattles away incessantly as he conducts him through
the grounds, past the school, towards the all-attracting "Big."