The dock-foreman smiled faintly. “Dooty must be done,” he said, in a firm voice. “I’m quite prepared, my life’s insured, and I’m on the club, and some o’ the children are getting big now, that’s a comfort.” A feeling of depression settled on all present, and Augustus Wheeler, aged eight, having gleaned from the conversation that his sire had received instructions, which he intended promptly to obey, to fall into the dock forthwith, suddenly opened his mouth and gave vent to his affection and despair in a howl so terrible that the ornaments on the mantelpiece shook with it. “Don’t scold ’im,” said the dock-foreman, tenderly, as Mrs. Wheeler’s thin, shrill voice entered into angry competition with the howl; “never mind, Gussie, my boy, never mind.” This gentleness had no effect, Gussie continuing to roar with much ardour, but watching out of the corner of one tear-suffused eye the efforts of his eldest sister to find her pocket. “Hold your noise and I’ll give you a ha’penny,” she said, tartly. Gussie caught his breath with a sob, but kept steam up, having on some similar occasions been treated with more diplomacy than honesty. But to-day he got the half-penny, together with a penny from the visitor, and, having sold his concern in his father for three halfpence, gloated triumphantly in a corner over his envious peers. “Death,” said Mr. Wheeler, slowly, after silence had been restored, “is always sudden. The most sudden death I knew ’appened to a man who’d been dying for seven years. Nobody seemed to be able to believe he’d gone at last.” “It’s a good job he wasn’t married,” said Mrs. Wheeler, raising herself on her elbow; “sailors ’ave no right to marry at all. If I thought that one ’o my gals was goin’ to marry a sailor, I don’t know what I shouldn’t do. Something steady on shore is the thing.” “I don’t know,” said the tactless Mr. Wheeler. “I think if I was a gal I should like to marry a sailor; there’s something romantic about them. I often wish I’d been a sailor.” “Then you wouldn’t ’ave ’ad me,” said the lady from the sofa, grimly. Mr. Wheeler sighed, but whether at the thought of what he might have lost or what he had gained, cannot be safely determined. Still in a morbid mood, he relapsed into silence, leaving Fraser to glance anxiously to where Poppy, pale and pretty, sat listening to the clumsy overtures of Mr. Bob Wheeler. “I might ’ave ’ad two or three sailors if I’d liked,” continued Mrs. Wheeler, musingly, “but I wouldn’t.” Fraser murmured his admiration at her firmness. “There was Tom Rogers, ’e was the first,” said Mrs. Wheeler; “you remember ’im, father?” “Chap with bow legs and a squint, wasn’t he?” said the dock-foreman, anxious to please. “I never saw ’im squint,” said his wife, sharply. “Then there was Robert Moore—he was number two, I think.” “’Ad a wife a’ready,” said Mr. Wheeler, turning to the visitor; “’e was a bright lot, ’e was.”