"_Have_ you, sir? Then I am sure I am very glad to see _you_, though I don't know you from Adam." Thus a comely elderly woman, short of stature, plump of form, sparkling and dark of eye, who, perfectly clean and neat herself, stood in the midst of her perfectly clean and neat arrangements, and surveyed Captain Jorgan with smiling curiosity. "Ah! but you are a sailor, sir," she added, almost immediately, and with a slight movement of her hands, that was not very unlike wringing them; "then you are heartily welcome." "Thank'ee, ma'am," said the captain, "I don't know what it is, I am sure; that brings out the salt in me, but everybody seems to see it on the crown of my hat and the collar of my coat. Yes, ma'am, I am in that way of life." "And the other gentleman, too," said Mrs. Raybrock. "Well now, ma'am," said the captain, glancing shrewdly at the other gentleman, "you are that nigh right, that he goes to sea,--if that makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma'am, Tom Pettifer; he's been a'most all trades you could name, in the course of his life,--would have bought all your chairs and tables once, if you had wished to sell 'em,--but now he's my steward. My name's Jorgan, and I'm a ship-owner, and I sail my own and my partners' ships, and have done so this five-and-twenty year. According to custom I am called Captain Jorgan, but I am no more a captain, bless your heart, than you are." "Perhaps you'll come into my parlour, sir, and take a chair?" said Mrs. Raybrock. "Ex-actly what I was going to propose myself, ma'am. After you." Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop, Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the little, low back-room,--decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old china teapots, and punch-bowls,--which was at once the private sitting-room of the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of Steepways. "Now, ma'am," said the captain, "it don't signify a cent to you where I was born, except--" But here the shadow of some one entering fell upon the captain's figure, and he broke off to double himself up, slap both his legs, and ejaculate, "Never knew such a thing in all my life! Here he is again! How are you?"