John Huish's eyeglass dropped inside his vest, while, in spite of all his efforts to master his emotions, he glanced uneasily at the door. "But you would not do anything so rude, Lawdor," said the doctor gravely, as he fixed his eye upon the captain. "Thank you, doctor. No; of course I would not. I should be extremely sorry to insult a patient of yours." Huish began to feel for his glass, but remembered himself, and listened eagerly to the captain, while Mr Roberts seemed to have sunk into a pensive, thoughtful state, paying no heed to what was going on at the table. "If I had danced attendance in Whitehall once," said Captain Lawdor, "I had hung about that entrance a thousand times, and it was fill up forms, make minutes, present petitions to my Lords, address this department and come back to that, till it nearly drove me--till," he added hastily, "I was very wroth with them, and one day--let me see, I think I told you," he continued, rolling up a piece of new bread into a marble, "that I was an excellent shot with a biscuit?" and he stared hard at Huish. "Yes, you did," said Huish, smiling. "Don't laugh, sir," exclaimed the captain. "This is not a ribald jest." "Breakers ahead, captain," said the doctor, holding his glass to be refilled. "To be sure, of course, doctor. Wear ship--you are listening, sir?" "With the greatest attention," replied Huish, who was becoming reconciled to his position. "Well, sir, one day I went with my pockets filled with the roundest, smallest, and hardest ships' biscuits I could procure, and--you are not attending, Roberts," he exclaimed, filliping the bread marble at John Huish's _vis-a-vis_, who bowed and smiled. "Well, sir, as I told you, I went loaded with the biscuits, and marched straight into a board room, or a committee room, or something of the kind, and there I stormed them for quite ten minutes before they got me out. Ha, ha, ha! I emptied my pockets first, and the way I rattled the biscuits on one bald-headed fellow's pate was something to remember. I did not miss him once, Mr Huish," he said, turning sharply round. "Indeed?" he said, smiling. "In--deed, in--deed," said the captain. "It was such a head! He was one of those youngish men whose heads are so aggravatingly white and smooth and shiny that they do not look bald, but perfectly naked. He was a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, and I declare to you, sir, that his head was perfectly indecent till I coloured it a little with the biscuits." "Yes, an amusing story," said the doctor, as the dinner went on. "Come, Roberts, you are very quiet. Have a glass of that dry champagne?" "And once again I see that brow," said Mr Roberts in a low, soft, sweet voice: "no bridal wreath is there, a widow's sombre cap conceals--thank you, doctor," he continued, sighing as he altered the position of the glass.