o many child'n she didn't
know wot to do. If so, she knows wot to do now. She's only got to hand
'em over to poor Dick Moy, an' leave him to suffer the consickences.--
Ah, 'ere she comes."

Dick rose as he spoke, and handed a chair to Nora at the moment that his
better, but lesser, half entered.

It must not be supposed that Dick said all this without interruption.
On the contrary, he bawled it out in the voice of a bo's'n's mate, while
the four daughters and five sons, including the baby and the infant,
crawled up his legs and clung to his pockets, and enacted Babel on a
small scale.

Mrs Moy was a very pretty, tidy, cheerful little woman, of the fat,
fair, and forty description, save that she was nearer thirty-five than
forty. It was clear at a glance that she and Dick had been made for
each other, and that, had either married anybody else, each would have
done irreparable damage to the other.

"Sit down, Nora. I'm so glad to see you. Come to breakfast, I hope?
we're just going to have it."

Mrs Moy said this as if she really meant it, and would be terribly
disappointed if she met with a refusal. Nora tried to speak, but Babel
was too much for her.

"Silence!" burst from Dick, as if a small cannon had gone off in the
room.

Babel was hushed.

"Mum's the word for _three minutes_," said Dick, pointing to a huge
Yankee clock which stood on the chimney-piece, with a model frigate in a
glass case, and a painted sea and sky on one side of it, and a model
light-vessel in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on the other.

There was profound wisdom in this arrangement. If Dick had ordered
silence for an indefinite space of time, there would have been
discontent, approximating to despair, in Babel's bosom, and, therefore,
strong temptation to rebellion. But three minutes embraced a fixed and
known period of time. The result was a desperate effort at restraint,
mingled with gleeful anticipation. The elder children who could read
the clock stared eagerly at the Yankee time-piece; the younger ones who
couldn't read the clock, but who knew that the others could, stared
intently at their seniors, and awaited the signal. With the exception
of hard breathing, the silence was complete; the baby being spell-bound
by example, and the feeble remarks of the infant--which had been
transferred to the arms of the eldest girl--making no impression worth
speaking of.

"You are very kind," said Nora, "I'll stay for b