It all started during one of those informal tea-parties the Skipper's Missus sometimes held in the after-cabin. They were delightful affairs. You needn't accept the Invitation if you didn't want to; there was no necessity to put on your best monkey-jacket if you did. You were just told to "blow in" if you wanted some tea, and then you made your own toast, and there was China tea, in a big blue-and-white pot, that scented the whole cabin. The Skipper's Missus sat by the fire, with her hands linked round her knees in her habitually graceful and oddly characteristic attitude; Torps and Jess, those gentle philosophers, occupied the chintz-covered settee; the A.P. sat on the hearth-rug, cross-legged like a tailor, so that he could toast and consume the maximum number of muffins with the minimum amount of exertion; the Junior Watchkeeper, who by his own admission "went all the bundle on his tea," and the Indiarubber Man, who was clumsy with a tea-cup, shared the table and a jam-pot, and sat munching, tranquil-eyed, like a pair of oxen in a stall. The Captain and the First Lieutenant were rummaging through the drawers of the knee-hole table in search of an ancient recipe of the former's for manufacturing varnish of a peculiar excellence wherewith to beautify the corticene on the aft-deck. "How are the children?" asked the Torpedo Lieutenant, helping himself to milk and Jess to a lump of sugar. "Out of quarantine yet?" "Yes," replied the youthful mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James. "At last, poor things! Christmas is such a wretched time to have measles. No parties, no Christmas-tree----" The A.P. looked up from the absorbing task of buttering a muffin to his satisfaction. "D'you remember the Christmas when you all came on board--wasn't it a rag? I broke my glasses because I was a tiger. I was that fierce." "And I was chased by the dockyard police all the way from the Admiral Superintendent's garden with a young fir-tree under my arm. We had it for a Christmas-tree in the wardroom. Do you remember?" They were all old friends, you see, and had served two commissions in succession with this Captain. "Isn't it rather hard on the _Chee-si's_?" asked Torps, "being done out of their parties--no, Jess, three lumps are considered quite enough for little dogs to consume at one sitting." The Skipper's Missus looked across the cabin at her husband: "Tim, your tea's getting cold. Why shouldn't we have a children's party on board one day next week? It isn't too late, is it?" "Yes, sir," chimed in the Indiarubber Man. "A _pukka_ children's party, with wind-sails for them to slither down and a merry-go-round on the after-capstan?" The Captain drank his tea thoughtfully; his blue eyes twinkled. "Let us have a definition of _children_, Standish. I seem to remember a certain bridesmaid at the Gunnery Lieutenant's wedding of what I believe is technically called the 'flapper' age----"